Reasons why Fran prefers to shop online

Last weekend saw me in Yorkshire on a writers' course. We were given a task on Saturday morning: write about a journey. We read out our pieces on the Saturday night. This was mine and I thought some of you might identify with its sentiments :)





I would rather navigate spiteful whitewater rapids, I think, as I embark on a journey that terrifies me more. I would sooner scale mountains thick with snow and peril. I would, instead, fight through rainforests with only a compass and the threat of snakebite for companions. Yes, I would choose any - all - of these, rather than launch myself on this journey.

I am travelling, nudging, millimetre by millimetre, from the back to the front of the Saturday morning queue at Tesco.

No, there are no killer beasts here, except for unpredictable wayward trolleys, untamed in the inexpert grasp of Marjorie, who normally shops online, or Derek, who hasn't shopped alone since 1972 and is only here because of his wife's broken ankle. And her Stare of Death.

There are no crocodiles here, no lions, tigers, hornets or spiders. But there is the fierce bite, the deep sting of knowing that ahead stretches a queue of seventeen others. Each, like me, has a trolley piled to perdition with pizza and pastries and packets of peas. My quest up this queue of stultification will delete forty-five minutes from my life that I will never see again.

And nor would I want to see those minutes again, any more than I would offer myself a second time to a grizzly bear that had just wrenched off my foot with its teeth or denuded me of an arm with a swipe of its concrete slab of a paw.

And, no, here there aren't snarls and hissings from a rainforest's hidden beast-life that can cool the blood faster than the Grim Reaper himself. But, in front of me, there is a Small Child. A Small Child who wants Haribo. Small children who want Haribo - but aren't getting it - have screams that could slice into the soul of the Archbishop of Canterbury and divide him cleanly from every moral and compassionate instinct. This here is not a child. This is a monstrous wailing boy-creature that any midnight wolf would be proud to call 'brother'.

The queue shifts. Another millimetre of ground conquered.

But my journey - perhaps my last journey - has only begun.

Having detached his own tongue in his fury, Bobby was never going to enjoy Haribo again






Comments

  1. Anonymous6/6/16 19:12

    I haven't set foot in a retail store in probably a year!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Debra She Who Seeks6/6/16 20:40

    Might just be easier to give up food altogether.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fran Hill8/6/16 05:49

      Oh, I've tried that. Believe me, I've tried.

      Delete
  3. River7/6/16 01:36

    The trick is to be at the store very early when they first open the doors for the day. first in, first out and you have the whole rest of the day to catch up on the sleep you missed by getting up at early o'clock.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fran Hill8/6/16 05:50

      I hear there have been complaints about people going into 24 hour stores in the middle of the night, wearing their pyjamas, to make the most of quiet periods.

      Delete
  4. Barbara Neubeck7/6/16 02:59

    .. Hello Fran.... I like browsing through the shops for bits and pieces, odds and ends and such like things... but, I don't like grocery shopping.
    Lucky for me, hubby does.... he'll come and say 'write me a list I'm going to the mall to check the mail' .....and I do .. and he does. xxxx
    Hugs.. Barb xxxx

    ReplyDelete
  5. BadPenny8/6/16 00:36

    I do feel sorry for the parents of screaming children. I'm ok with food shopping. At the big shop before Christmas the staff organise orderly queues & give out chocolates.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fran Hill8/6/16 05:51

      They give out chocolates? That's almost worth going shopping for!

      Delete
  6. Cheryl8/6/16 12:09

    And this is why I shop online! Wonderful piece of writing

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fran Hill8/6/16 12:28

      Thanks so much, Cheryl! Who would have thought, ten years ago, that we could just type in our requirements and along comes a little van with a lovely driver?

      Delete
  7. SmitoniusAndSonata9/6/16 05:36

    I prefer to choose my own food , so shop for myself . Perhaps years of practise has perfected my basilisk stare but I find that little Haribo addicts tend to shut up if I'm in the queue behind them .
    No , it's not the shopping , or the eating I'm tired of ... it's the damn washing up .

    ReplyDelete

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