I visited our local Tesco Behemoth yesterday in order to purchase an item from their reasonably priced clothing brand. As is often the case, I bottled out of going through the financial transaction process because I was not sure if the product – a pair of trousers, to be precise – were the right fit or appropriate for a man of my advancing years. I concluded I would need my partner, a woman of impeccable taste, apart from choosing a life partner, I fear, to give her seal of approval. We would go back later, she would offer her advice, ignore it and then I would end up buying the trousers I wanted to buy in the first place. My indecision is final. It drives her mad.
I don’t mind admitting that I am not adverse to a little supermarket shopping every now and then, usually to top up what I have inevitably forgotten to order from our on-line weekly delivery. That was not always the case. I always hated the process of filling up a supermarket trolley, emptying it at the till, filling it up again after the till, putting it all in the car and then taking it out yet again when I got home. Queuing with my fellow doddery pensioners complaining about the price of eggs and biscuits and of course the weather (“turned out cold again” – yes, that’s because it’s fucking winter, I would think to reply but never do) was never for me. The self-scanning tills, especially when you don’t even have to empty your shopping bag, is bliss for me. Unfortunately, I then proceeded to commence random shopping with no prepared list.
One of the bonuses associated with home deliveries is that you are less likely to make spontaneous purchases. Now, here I was in the Tesco Behemoth gazing wistfully at things that I might like to purchase, instead of things I actually needed. First, I happened upon a special issue of National Geographic, a magazine I was interested in as a teenage boy, given that it was one of the few publications that published photographs of naked women, often in African jungles. It says a lot about me – and not in a good way – that since then, I have never thought to look inside its covers, until yesterday when I saw said special edition: ‘ADHD: The science and what it tells us.’ At a cost of £9.99, how could I possibly resist and I didn’t resist. So, that’s the best part of tenner spent that I had not intended to spend. What would I do next?
I wandered up and down the aisles totally brainlessly until I reached the wine section. I knew we were running low – not that low to be fair, but still – and remembered that Tesco is one of the better supermarkets when it comes to wine. I have long passed the stage where my first glance is to the bottom shelf where the very cheapest wines are kept. It is not through snobbery that I do not choose the under-a-fiver wines. It is because they are truly dreadful. Some time ago, my long-suffering partner and I decided that rather seeking out quantity we would go for quality. Naturally, this would necessitate a reduction in wine consumption on our part but in health terms alone that was no bad thing. And once you start drinking better quality wines, it is hard, if not impossible, to go back to the firewater on the bottom shelf.
Just last year, I found myself in possession of an Australian Shiraz, a favourite grape variety, we drank it and, frankly, it was disgusting. If the label was Sarsons, the popular vinegar brand, I would not have been surprised. The next time I was in Sainsbury’s, I checked out that particular wine and it was on sale for just over £4, which means in effect given the production costs, the delivery costs and the supermarket mark-up you were getting a few pennies worth of wine, inevitably the dregs of the barrel, so to speak. It is a simple fact that the more you pay, the better the wine will be. You literally cannot get a decent bottle of wine for under a fiver, unless that is your sole intention is to get pissed. There may have been times when my aim was indeed to get pissed. In old age, my tolerance for alcohol has declined alarmingly to the extent that hangovers are to be avoided at all costs and crap wine, I know, is more likely to leave me feeling terrible the morning after. In Tesco, I plumped for a juicy Aussie Shiraz, which came in at £11 and a cheeky French Viognier – my favourite grape – at a tenner.
That’s brainless shopping for you. A book about ADHD which I will struggle to read because of my ADHD and two bottles of wine we probably didn’t need (the Shiraz was excellent, by the way, so it was definitely needed) and more money spent than I would have spent had I returned with the item I went there for in the first place.
I quite like the Tesco Behemoth store. It’s surprisingly more personal than you might imagine, thanks to the friendly and helpful staff and while the supermarket’s lack of variety in many products does tend to limit one’s choice – always a moot point with me – it was a bearable experience.
That’s as rock and roll as my life gets, I’m afraid. Next week: another afternoon in Kwikfit. I’ll tell you all about it, if you can stay awake that long.
