August's Column

I have just posted my first monthly column, just in the nick of time as August is nearly over.  For my first column I am tackling the subject of supermarket shopping.


August 2010 - Supermarkets

A perfectly pleasant looking sixty-something year old woman was in front of me in the checkout queue in Waitrose yesterday. Indeed the same woman and I seem to be keeping to the same shopping clock and have been in the supermarket at the same time at least twice a week for the last fortnight. I am very ashamed to admit I have developed an impressively intense hatred for this stranger. And she is by no means the first person to fall victim to my prejudice, any poor soul who I encounter in a food shopping environment could be subjected to the same fate; because I am a food bitch and she is my latest IFB, or Inferior Food Buyer.

I love supermarket shopping, not in my local Sainsbury’s mind you where they are constantly running out of essentials like milk, the aisles too close together and there are never enough people working on the tills. And the one time I found myself in Lidl’s scarred me for life; less said about that the better. Of course I would rather a farm shop, but needs must and my supermarket of choice is Waitrose. I’m sure some of you are thinking ‘Marks and Spencer’s surely, if you are such a snob about these things’ but no, M and S is good for people who don’t actually cook; try buying a selection of ingredients for a proper dinner and you will be hard fetched to find anything that isn’t already prepared for you in some way, shape or form.

Long have I played the game with myself whereby I survey a fellow shopper’s selection as it sits upon the conveyer belt and try to work out what meals they are planning to cook. Never have I taken this to the extent of asking them in order to ascertain whether I am correct mind you, but it is a good way of thinking up different meals. Try it, good way to kill time at the checkout. Latest IFB’s basket was full of all the things that I resent most: pre-chopped onions, ready prepped veggies, steaks that come complete with a little sachet of sauce -heaven forbid you bother to make your own. I know I am being harsh, surely many such people are very busy and have very long working-weeks and such people I can forgive (if I really, really try) for cutting corners, but I know this woman is free to go to Waitrose at about three in the afternoon multiple times in the week, so she can’t be that hard working.

It makes me wonder what my fellow shoppers make of me and my selection. My trolley is never without a small mountain of greens and carrots so I must look like a very healthy soul, in fact said veggies are actually for my two pet bunnies, but I do like how virtuous it makes me look. An example recent basket of mine contained: pork tenderloin, apples and onion to stuff it, cider for the sauce and potatoes for a lovely creamy mash; proper ingredients, no pre peeled potatoes to be found in my basket. Invariably there is alcohol of some description is always a feature; which is a pain when all the people on the checkout are less than 18 and look they have just walked off the set of Skins and have to do that annoying waving the offending liquor in the air until their supervisor types in a code, having glared at me in a quizzical manner.

I try to give pleasant looking sixty-something year old woman and other IFBs the benefit of the doubt, but as much as I try and tell myself they may dedicate their lives to looking after sick and dying children or trying to cure cancer it is of no use.

So it is with regret that I warn you that if you are out shopping and you are suffering from IFBism, watch out for a woman trying to hide her sneer; or you may just find when your back is turned that that bag of pre chopped carrots batons you had selected has transformed into a bunch of whole carrots, with the greens still on the end and covered in soil.