After my show each week we go to the supermarket. This is a store called Sainsbury’s and it is almost at the bottom of the High Street.
I look forward to it but it is quite an ‘event.’
Hubs says,
“It’s the long walk back with heavy bags that gets you isn’t it?”
“No,” I say, “what gets me is much more complicated than that!”
But before we go there I was contemplating the nature of our walk home from shopping last Friday, with a heavy wheelie basket and two bags that steadily increase in weight with each step, and I thought,
“I like the challenge of walking the groceries home, it appeals to the Spartan in me!”
I think every Brit. must have a Spartan inside!
What constitutes the ‘event’ is Sainsbury’s itself. Not as big as our Kroger in Garland, it has me staring sightlessly at the shelves of apparently randomly placed food.
The positioning of items doesn’t seem to make sense.
Flour is on the baking aisle next to the bread, but opposite all the cake accessories, sugar, icing, baking powder, dried fruits and suet.
Eggs are next to the oriental and Mexican foods and not refrigerated.
Soup is squeezed between tahini and packets of figs.
Oils and olives are with the spices, pickled onions and re-constituted rare mushrooms.
Tinned vegetables are all together only for some reason the tinned tomatoes are relegated to the shelf opposite with the tuna, cod’s roe, salmon and sardines.
Up the aisle a bit, alongside the Old El Paso display of Mexican food, are cartons of tomatoes but the re-fried beans are with the beans further down the aisle with the pulses and barbecue sauces.
The storage bags and aluminium foil, which were sensibly with the napkins and picnic items, were moved arbitrarily last week to an aisle with the clothes soap, detergents and toilet papers, on the one side and biscuits and crackers on the other.
Oh and strangely the cocoa is not with the teas, coffees, ovaltine and cereals, it is on the baking aisle opposite the flour.
I go to look for something and am riveted to the spot trying to find say, a cake mix, tucked between sugars, raisins, boxed puddings and custards all on the same shelf. My eye has to search through all the other items for what I’m looking for, no easy browsing as in our American store.
Lots of choices, few multiples.
In contrast there are three double aisles of pastries, breads and biscuits, granola type bars, tarts and fancies, croissants, crumpets, puddings and pies, bagged sweets, bars of chocolate, custards, baguettes, sticky buns, scones and pain au chocolats. Everything you could possibly imagine to satisfy the sweet tooth spread generously along bulging, rambling shelves.
Next comes the frozen food packed tightly into one aisle, double sided, to accommodate the large variety of ready made meals on offer for the busy housewife or hubs. Everything that can be bought fresh or tinned elsewhere in the shop is somehow crammed into this freezer space. Why buy fresh?
Sausages, yorkshire puddings and sprouts, ice cream, cheesecakes and chicken, legs of lamb, bacon and hamburgers, chips, onion rings, boil in the bag meals, fish and quorn, roast parsnips and prawns, pizza, fruit and cakes, pastry, butter and vegetables.
As I’ve said, lots of choices few multiples.
Looking for the pesto sauce or capers, anchovy paste, even flour, is like searching for a needle in a haystack and just writing about it is making me dizzy!
This is what wears me out!
This is the ‘event.’
The walk to Sainsbury’s is made in tense anticipation, the walk home, dragging our goods behind us, is made with a huge, Spartan, sigh of relief.
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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