SUPERMARKET BLUES

I’m not one for shopping, never have been. Show me a busy suburban shopping centre and I’ll show you the vein in the centre of my forehead throbbing with palpable displeasure. I don’t need any more shoes. I have no desire to smell like Christina Aguilera’s liberty bodice. I’ve never been brave enough to shop lift not even when nicking bottles of Anne French spot toner from Boots was so in vogue it was featured as a storyline in Grange Hill. Shopping for me is done out of necessity but that said I’m not phobic about it and I don’t live like Stig of the dump just yet.

I once worked with a guy who went to Cost Co twice a year for tinned food and bog roll and stole bars of soap from Inter City train toilets. How do I know this? He once slid open his desk drawer and showed me his collection; a coffee can full of medicinal smelling green soap tablets and then tapped the side of his nose with his finger in a knowing gesture. He also told me that he had been reusing the same square of tin foil to wrap his lunch time sandwiches for seven years. One year at the Christmas party I saw him deftly fill his suit pockets with sausage rolls and quiche; nonchalantly he turned to me and said ‘that’s my fucking breakfast.’

Given the opportunity I like grocery shopping during dawn of the dead hours, not out of any social phobia per se just to give myself a bit of a break. For steer me in the direction of the nearest florescent lit food emporium, add to that a hundred or so aimless people and their screaming children and like Dr. David Banner before me my eyes change from green to poached egg grey and the desire to smash the place the fuck up comes over me like white heat. In daily life I like to think of myself as being a rather peaceable person the type of woman who will gladly give a bath tub spider a second chance at life by sending it on its way out of the front door with a cheery wave. Put me behind the handlebars of shopping trolley with a fucked front wheel and within thirty seconds I’m quelling an inner desire to take off my boots and start hitting people randomly like September wasps.

Hemmed in by menopausal women with no idea why they are there or what they came in for I catch a glimpse of my future self in all its befuddled scarlet cheeked glory. When watching marauding children that I know should be at school zipping about on their damn heelies I want to lock them in a freezer and demand a letter from their head teacher. During the witching hours I can sashay around the aisles at my leisure nodding politely at my fellow insomniacs as I pass. Talking to my favourite check lady one night she told me that a local swingers group meet in the frozen food section once a month to check each other out. Apparently to signal interest the etiquette is to drop an ice cream into your intended’s trolley; in accordance with the swinger’s ice cream and frozen snack code of practice, details of which she was disappointingly sketchy about. I presume that if you lob a mint choc chip Cornetto into someone’s basket that’s a green light that the next time you meet it’ll be to get down to business. What’s required should a tub of Chunky Monkey be hurled in your direction I have no idea.