02/02/02

Every Thursday is shopping day. Well for my family at least. For others the most common days are either Friday or Saturday mornings when there ain’t no football on.

  My family go to Asda not a medium sized one, but a big, abattoir sized complex with clothes sections, restaurants and even its own conference rooms. Normally it is only my mother and me, and on my numerous journeys to Asda I have begun to notice that supermarkets are all big holes, where most of societies bad things come to light, no-one ever recognises anyone, no-one says hello unless they’re trying to sell insurance and you never get any help of you accidentally knock something off a shelf.

  When you go into your local supermarket remember to acknowledge to people around you, they will be your shopping herd. They will generally follow you or vice versa around the store. You’ll see these people at least seven times throughout your quest, but they always, and I mean always beat you to the checkout, even if they are old or infirm.

  Out of the many sections there are only ever a few I remember. The first one is the fruit and vegetable aisle. It is completely silent, husbands are poked until they are quiet, and this is where the females come into their own. They walk with a purpose, silently darting across each side of the aisle, if they bump into anyone there are no apologies, they simply remain quiet and adjust their course. And most of the time with a plastic tear-off bag ready for easy grabbing of fruit. To the husband (and most humans) the getting of fruit would appear to be a simple process, but sadly each piece must be checked, over and over again for bruises and other anomalies such as the fingerprints of asylum seekers who got their grubby food voucher hands over the food. The bad, bruised fruit is usually left for the elderly or the naive who are either too old or stupid to reach the good fruit in time.

  Next up in my Asda is the meat section, the most delightful of them all. The vegetarians skirt by quickly while the proud men stand there in awe of meat. Various Hams (Jews may skip this bit) and those curious parts of animals with stuffing or boiled eggs already incorporated into the anatomy, it’s as if God has finally decided to put the savory side dish into the animal, I’m quite sure that soon Pigs will be born with the apples already lodged in their mouths. The women will grab the ticket to wait in line while the husband guards the trolley. When the wife spots that his enthusiasm for this task is dwindling she reminds him of his purpose, with a quick point and stare.

  The next aisle is where you will first encounter what I like to call “lost husbands” these men have lost their wives and their trolleys, and will forever spend the rest of their lives in the supermarket, searching desperately for their beloved. After time their brains have been reduced to the size of the dried prunes in aisle ten.

  Ah, by now we have reached the aisle that fills me with the most joy and wonder. The cereal aisle, no matter how many times I have done it before every time I go there I always end up buying a new novelty cereal such as Coco pops, honey nut loops, or Nesquik stuff, it should also be noted that I never, ever finish the cereal.

  The next aisle we come to is the soft drinks aisle, do not, and I mean DO NOT grab anything off the bottom shelf, the one you have to get onto your knees to reach. There will never be any products left because that is what Satan wants you to think. If you try to reach back into the ground level shelf you will be grabbed by the hands of lost husbands, who themselves are being dragged into the fires of hell through the secret wormhole that accompanies every ground level shelf.

  After walking quickly through the perfumes and toiletries section which is lethal to anyone except the mischievous housewife (where asthmatics need to be aware) you reach the alcohol section where all the lost husbands who still have motor functions go to pass time. They browse the section for ages, sometimes eternity. It is a known fact that 95% of all lost husbands are last seen in this section, when you see first stage lost husbands they are wandering in the void between aisles looking for their wives while carrying a 24 pack of 4X.

  You then go quickly through the Quorn section, being careful not the break the spines of the undernourished theology students along the way. And after a quick walk by the forbidden cake zone (which you are never aloud to purchase from) you reach your final aisle: frozen foods. This is the student and slackers paradise. If you cooked each kind of food in the frozen aisle in a microwave it would take less than an hour. Chips, pizza’s, steaks, the list is endless. But again, you can never, ever buy it because if you’re with your mother or wife or girlfriend, to buy these frozen products is heresy. It offends their cooking technique.

  You then get to the checkout, and don’t complain about the guy in front of you who pays with a credit card, accept it; the chances are everyone does it. Here you see the wives who came in with a husband, but now leave without, you also see the rest of your shopping herd, each one of whom have already found a place in the queue. There are also sightings of the people who will hold up your trip by a further twenty minutes: the trainee. They can’t pack bags, they can’t make the carousel work and they can never scan a f**king barcode!

  But there is one thing above all else that threatens your entire existence. DO NOT EVER try to put products onto the carousel, or into the bags after scanning, you can never get the order right. Your mother or wife has spent all morning figuring out that all the frozen stuff goes first, then all the green stuff, then the stuff in boxes. As if I, or in fact the products give a f**k where they go, or what order they are scanned in. Broccoli does not mind having fish fingers as a traveling buddy, and frozen peas do not hate having to sit next to the Kit-Kats in the car on the way home. I say just dump them on, let them be processed and fit as many things into one bag as possible before getting the f**k out of there before I get sucked into the fires of hell!!!!!!!

  Here is a simple reference guide to the main characters you will meet in your supermarket:

Mischievous housewife:-

She has a small handbag, and a shopping list. Her glasses rest on the very end of her nose. She is at the very peak of her shopping career, she can pick fruit like no other, and she can spot a two for one offer from a mile away. Sadly on her shopping trips she is usually widowed due to the wormhole in aisle five. It is her and her husband who will always steal the spot you are trying to get into with the trolley, she will not say sorry if she bumps you either, she will carry on, for her shopping is life.

Lost Husband:-

Usually balding, and usually has no idea that an innocent day shopping will lead to his MIA status. It is too late to save him if you see him wandering the aisle with a box of lager, let him go, he cannot be saved.

Old Woman:-

She is bitter because she can no longer shop like a housewife. With her husband lost she has to push around a smaller trolley and thus stay close to the end of each aisle in order to avoid crushing by normal size humans.

Psycho:- He walks in ten minutes after you do, and he looks like he is there to go on a kill crazy shooting spree, you keep an eye out for him all through the shopping experience, but luckily Satan mistakes him for a husbands and he is lost in aisle five before he can kill again.

  That’s it. Remember to listen to what I have said next time you go shopping. 

© Paul Hunt 2002