Supermarket Swap

Back in March 2008 before the bankers brought the world to its knees, I went to see Ross Noble perform live at Salisbury’s City Hall.  It was my birthday, a school night and Ross Noble still had a sharp jawline and visible cheekbones.  I was throbbing with excitement.  In fact, I throbbed so much that I couldn’t stop myself from heckling.  I can’t remember the surreal narrative to which I contributed that night, except that it had something to do with Waitrose and earned me the moniker ‘Waitrose Woman’ from the tousle haired, dark eyed, barely comprehensible Geordie (yeah, Ross, make me work for those gags!).



How times change.  Back then when I still thought that the eurozone was something in danger of depletion by deodorant, I did shop in Waitrose, at least sometimes.  I liked its wide aisles full of polite, middle class shoppers, unlikely to wrestle you for a reduced pack of smoked salmon or to elbow you out of the way of the last remaining jar of artichoke hearts.  I used to bloody eat artichoke hearts!  Can you imagine it!  I thought nothing of paying up to forty percent more for branded goods or shelling out a fiver for half a litre of fish stock… Hell, I was keeping Delia in baking tins!

And it wasn’t just Waitrose, to be fair.  Occasionally, I’d stop by Marks’ and pick up a handful of couscous and a coupla olives, cheerfully handing over another of those fivers.  This wasn’t just any food, after all, this was overpriced, overpackaged food…

The thing is, three years later, the income streams are no longer threatening to burst the banks, I fixed my mortgage just weeks before the interest rate crashed, my children are becoming more costly the taller they get and I’m oil dependent.  Supermarket snobbery has become an unaffordable luxury.

So, this is a confession.  I have shopped in Asda.  And I’d do it again (check out the cost of Hellman’s Mayonnaise and tell me you haven’t got a bargain).  I haven’t quite brought myself to try Surf Automatic, but it may yet go that way; this is a long journey with many via points, after all and every Lidl helps.

The vivid green of Asda branding, so very far from any green found in nature, does unsettle me, but I like the arse slapping in the adverts so I’m at peace with the place and, when I’m in there, I feel affluent again.

But this is not the whole of my confession, because I have fallen further, friends. 

I’m ashamed to say that on more than one occasion, I have made unkind comments about the succession of minor celebrities, kings and queens of the musical jungle (I’m  thinking of you, Jason, and you, Colleen and now you, Stacey) who have happily handed over their integrity in exchange for a plate of mini toads-in-the-hole or a frozen strawberry gateau.  With laughter, black and cruel, have I condemned the food of their glittery commercials and indicted their clientele as the flabby underbelly (emphasis on belly here) of the gastro-impoverished. 

Never did I think I’d be channelling Kerry Katona, the undisputed princess of the low rent, but it’s happened.  Sam has gone to Iceland.

No, I don’t have tattoos.  No, I don’t have a dog on a string. No, I don’t have a BMI of 35.  I do however, have a pair of velour tracky bums (no contraband Uggs yet) and a taste for prawns in filo.

If you haven’t done it yet, try it.  Go to Iceland.  I did.  What it did for my self esteem would have cost thousands in therapy.  I felt like a bloody supermodel.  For twenty minutes, I was the thinnest person with the best hair on the planet.  It was the happiest supermarket shop ever.  Add to that the joy of frozen party food, cheap chocolate fudge cake and all the ice cream your children could smear on the sofa, and you’ll know where I’m at.

Three cheers then for the discount supermarkets.  The lighting’s hideous, their reward schemes nonexistent and you’ll probably want to stick with the butcher for your actual meat products, oh, and you will have to overlook the trans-fats and hydrogenated vegetable oil issues, but be clever and you too could reduce your deficit.  Kerry’s done it.  And I’m pretty sure Ross has too.  How do I know?  Just look what happened to his jawline…