Here’s the thing: They’ve moved things at the supermarket.
You wouldn’t think such a thing would make much of a change. I mean, everything’s still there, it’s still somewhere, it’s not like they’ve hired a team of highly trained squirrels to shift things around while you shop so you can never ever find things.
Although… Well, come to think of it, it’s entirely possible they have.
They probably use the very and incredibly high shelves (what’s with that anyway? Are they expecting giants to come and shop here? Because I’m telling you, high shelves wouldn’t quite appease a giant. How are they supposed to use a can opener on all the tiny tins? They could drink all the juice in one gulp! If you want to cater to the giant population, you’re going to need to start stocking bigger everything. And bigger trolleys. And even then, with the giant produce, the nice checkout person wouldn’t be able to find the damn bar code, because I swear those things have a stealth mode that gets activated as soon as you’re within a meter or so of any device with which you might purchase it. It’s madness, I tell you! MADNESS.)
So we’re there, stocking up on chocolate and nutella and fruit and other stuff, and we can’t find the biscuit aisle. Which is odd, because it used to be right next to the chocolate (which made sense because of all the chocolate biscuits.) (unless those biscuits weren’t supposed to be chocolate and chocolate is suddenly contagious.) (I really hope chocolate is contagious.) (Because that would be awesome, for reasons I know I do not have to explain to you lovely people.)
All around us there are people looking vaguely homicidal, saying things like “Where. Is. The. Bread?!” and muttering about having been here since last Tuesday and they only came in for milk and they have no idea what’s happened. (Incidentally, they haven’t moved the milk. Which would account for the confusion, to be honest. I mean, if you’re moving things go the whole hog. Put the bakery on the roof and the dairy products in the basement! Suspend toiletries from the roof! Give everyone a spoon and tell them there’s
With me and my mum doing the shopping (except this week. Because this week my brain would explode, so I’m here instead) we have a sort of get-in-get-food-get-out approach. It isn’t like we have any real interest in discussing the price of milk or why the flowers seem to be dying (although I think some natural light and fresh air wouldn’t do them any harm.) (Might do their profits some harm though, so…) and so we go in like we have a Plan.
Most of the time we do not have a Plan.
Thus when we get to the, say, meats and poultry, aisle I go on ahead while my mother selects chicken breasts to get mince. We’re always eating mince! And then I stop. What if this week we do not eat mince? What if we actually use some of the mince we have apparently been stockpiling in the freezer for the next ice age? (Although, lets be honest, who’ll need a freezer in the ice age? Didn’t really think that one through.) Then I have a small panic attack and decide the best course of action is to go back to my mother and see what she does, as she is the one with The List.
By this time, people are getting a little bemused by the girl who appears to be trying to defrost a breaded plaice by breath alone, so I smile apologetically at them and run away, dodging trolleys and toddlers and special offers like Mario in a dodgeball tournament. (do they have tournaments for that? It always sounded painful to me, that game. I always pretended to get hit and ended up sitting out first.) (My lovely PE teachers, if you’re reading this, I apologise. But we all knew I was hardly going to be in the next Olympics unless they reinvented cowering as a sport.) (To my other PE teacher: No heart attack yet. Thanks for checking in.)
So as it’s the summer holidays, people have brought extra children to the supermarket! Yay! Except for the fact that these children do not want to be in here. They want to be at the park making as much noise as possible, or playing games, or trying to get around the whole house without touching the floor once (surprisingly hard, but also awesome. And it trains you in case your floor mystically disappears!)
So they’re not happy. And we’re not happy. And the whole place is filled to the brim with confusion and no-you-put-that-down-this-second-or-The-Man-will-get-you and stress and dear maude when does school start?
And in addition to this there’s always some poor kid who’s been lured away by the delights of frozen corn or bogof nutella, and is now lost. And, quite rightly, they’re wailing the place down. And most people are trying hard enough with the child wrangling and the stress and the wondering how it’s possible the organic mushrooms are less money than the non organic ones and DON’T TOUCH THAT and I’m terribly sorry about the mess, we really didn’t mean to pour a whole extra-large bottle of double concentrated fabric softener on the floor, we can pay for that related stress. (Although now the floors in the household cleaning aisle will be snuggly soft! So really, that’s a good thing. At least it’d give the trolleys a break. They must have achey wheels by the end of the day and a soft floor is probably the stuff of legends. Well done parent! Your child has made a legend come true!)
If I were in possession of words, I would be asking where he last saw his mum/grandma/childminder/helpful neighbour and what happened. As I’m not, I point this out to my mum and she asks all the relevant questions and somehow sorts the whole tangled mess out in twelve and a half seconds, because she’s good like that.
And then there’s the checkout and it’s loud and then THINGS start coming off the belt and you have to put them away.
My mum, in her awesomeness, has a System for this. Cold stuff in one bag, not food stuff in another, cupboard stuff in another, and so on, logically and like the highly efficient sort of person she is.
I… am not.
So there’s things coming towards me and I’m trying to keep up with the system and I get panicked and start chucking things into any bag at all, and when my mother asks “Is that the ______ bag?” I just nod frantically, and throw some more stuff in on top. After all, if you stick cold things in the same bag as loo roll, the loo roll will help insulate and the cold won’t get out and it’ll be awesome!
It’s science!
And that’s all before lunchtime.
I need to go and lie down with a medicinal piece of chocolate just thinking about it!
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