The children are all at school, the baby is with Granny and I have a wonderful rare two-hour break – the perfect opportunity to relax in a nearby coffee shop sipping a Cappacino. However, the fridge is looking dangerously empty, the fruit bowl contains a few rather sad looking grapes and we are down to the last few loo rolls. The weekly supermarket shop beckons.
I drive into the car park, turn into a space and then wonder why there is a rather angry looking woman staring at me. I have parked in a Child’s bay, quite forgetting this time that the car seats behind me are empty. After re-parking, I play around with the trolleys, choosing the right size and trying to find one without a faulty wheel. I then rummage in my bag looking for my list, only to discover I have left it on the kitchen table. I glance at the vast array of magazines on display, and move swiftly on to the fruit and vegetables. This is always my most time consuming aisle. There are just so many decisions to make. Organic, English, Fairtrade, Local? Weighing also eats into another precious few minutes. Once I have found some scales that work, I vacantly try to remember the name of the little brown hairy fruit in my hand (ah – yes a kiwi!) and then scroll through items, tap in the name which results in ‘Search Unknown.’ By then I have two people peering over my shoulder, so the pressure is on.
On to the next aisle and I bump into a familiar face. Smiling sweetly and with a confident, “How are you?” I am frantically trying to remember where I know her from and glance into her trolley for any clues. But we are only in aisle two and lemons, lettuce and pasta give nothing away. We pass the time of day and move on. With the trolly now overflowing with the ‘Buy 2 get 1 FREE’ offers (why do I need three bottles of bleach?), I arrive at the checkout. The customer behind me gazes disaprovingly into my trolley at the doughnuts I have thrown in for the children (not for me, of course!). “Would you like any help?” the friendly cashier asks me. “Yes please,” I cry out trying not to sound too desperate. With the bags neatly packed, I steer the overloaded trolley across the carpark trying to avoid any collisions with nearby cars. As I leave, I hear the contents of the neatly packed bags rolling across the car boot and realise I have forgotten the loo paper. Suddenly it occurs to me that the familiar face I had stopped to chat to earlier was in fact a total stranger who I had sat next to in the Surgery last week.
