Supermarket madness

And so to the first “musing” – supermarket shopping.

Until like a week ago I was happy to part with my fiver to get a little man in a van (who sometimes came on time and who sometimes didn’t) to deliver my shopping to my door.  I did this in the firm belief that I was being cost conscious i.e. if I don’t wander round the supermarket myself I am less likely to fill my trolley with pointless crap thereby reducing my bill and paying a fiver for the privelege somehow, in my warped mind seemed like a fair trade-off. 

Anyway, now I am a woman on a cost-cutting mission which means dragging our sorry asses to the supermarket, following a prescribed list and wandering like zombies from Night of the Living Dead around Tesco on a Saturday afternoon with the rest of the plebs.  Having not done this for a while I was amazed, perplexed and rather saddened by the sights that greeted me which kind of got me thinking….

Buggies with Cup Holders– the first sorry sight to greet me was a woman in her 30’s pushing one of those high-tech and horrendously expensive buggies that celebs are often seen jogging with on the beach front in Malibu, with a phone glued to her ear, talking in a very unecessary volumous way and paying no mind to where she was actually pushing said pram.  More annoying than this however, was the fact that said high-tech and horrendously expensive buggy had a friggin’ cup holder for her Starbucks frappa-cappa-half-fat-decaff-iced-latte!  They actually make buggies with bloody cup holders!!!  I mean I thought the point of pushing a buggy was to do just that – push your baby somewhere from A to B without the need to carry it, not use if as a beverage receptacle.  Buggies in my day were made out of the kind of fabric you see people carrying their washing to the laundrette in – all badly woven and a bit stringy – and came in blue and white stripes and red and white stripes and were held together with badly welded metal!  Now that’s a buggy.  All children of the 70s know exactly what I mean.  Buggies were not fashion acessories and did not come with endless additional gadgets.  Honestly, I bet you can get them with upgrade options like cars.  I was so amazed that I stared at her for longer than was really necessary till she turned into the dairy aisle.

Frozen Fruit– now, I am a fan of the frozen fruit in the sense that you can buy big tubs of it and stick it in the freezer and use for cakes and pies and smoothies and it won’t go off (unlike those 4 bananas I had to throw away just yesterday after a week), but really, do we need to go to the lengths of utter laziness by selling pre-sliced frozen lemon wedges for those idiots too bloody lazy to actually cut a lemon for their G&T!?  Honestly, people these were not lemons as in mixed with other fruit for pie purpose type lemons, they were actual lemons cut into the kind of shape and size you would need to look pretty in your drink.  I mean even bars and pubs cut their own bloody lemons!  Maybe the Tesco consumer is unable to use sharp implements I don’t know, but this – along with frozen Yorkshire puddings (and yes family and friends reading this who have been brain-washed by Aunt Bessie you know who you are) – really is the last straw in consumerism.  Stop buying these things immediately before you discover your penchant for buying all things pre-cut / prepared leads to a total loss of motor-neurone skills.  You have been warned!!!