Why I Should Never Be Taken To The Supermarket

I should begin with a confession.

Mr M does all the shopping, all the cooking, and all the washing up in the Murphy house. I know. I KNOW. The nation and I are in full agreement that I am entirely spoiled. But I know I am, and I feel that acknowledging it openly makes it acceptable. 

Today began promisingly.

A quick trip to the post office to send out the next wave of orders for The Tale of Florence and the Black Cat — Book 5 in the Florence series — winging their way to readers who have been waiting very patiently to meet Rhona the Magic Bunny.

Black the cat, for the record, is not happy about any of this.

He expected to be the star of this book. After all, it is named after him. He was not prepared for a bunny with stolen purple earrings to steal his thunder. 

I understand his pain.

Then came the BIG shop.

I knew it was serious when we got out of the car, and Mr M announced, “We’d better get two trollies.” Two trollies. I want you to imagine that for a moment. Are you feeling my pain now?

Florence, naturally, stayed at home. She was almost certainly asleep on the couch, basking in the April sunshine through the lounge window, entirely unbothered by the trauma I was about to be subjected to.

Over the course of the next hour, I trailed behind Mr M as he examined every bag of apples, every bunch of bananas, and every bulb of garlic. And that was just the first aisle. By the time we reached the tins — the peas, the beans, the tomatoes — I had mentally written three chapters of a new book and planned my LEJOG cycle next year.

“How many tins of beans do we have at home? Do you think we need any more?”

I had no idea. I never have any idea. That’s why Mr M does the shopping.

Then the peas. Every tin considered. Every tin examined. I have looked at those tins, and I can tell you with some confidence that they do not change from week to week. But perhaps they do, and I have simply never noticed. I am open to the possibility.

The highlight of the trip was selecting the Easter eggs. Highlight is perhaps not quite the right word, given that I was simultaneously calculating the cost of six chocolate eggs and wondering where the years have gone. But chocolate is chocolate, and I rallied.

Since when, by the way, do steaks have security tags? I walked past that display and genuinely wondered if I had slipped sideways into a parallel life without noticing. We still decided that we could spoil our guests on Easter Sunday with a steak each. We can live on jam sandwiches for the rest of the month.

The self-scanning was done. The bags for life were packed. See, I do have my uses. All that remained was to pay and go home.

If only.

The security tag on the steak raised the alarm, and a very pleasant young man appeared to inform us, still smiling, that we had been selected to have our shopping checked. My eyes may have rolled slightly. But I’m fairly confident the words in my head stayed there.

What followed was thirty minutes of watching that very pleasant assistant, helped by a willing Mr M, unpack our two completely full trollies, including tubs of ice cream that were, by this point, probably more of a cream-flavoured liquid, re-scan every single item, and re-pack it all again.

Just as he reached the end, the self-scanner bleeped again.

“Oh no. It says I have to start again.”

I found myself a seat. It seemed the sensible thing to do.

Somehow, through a combination of muttering, rushing about, and waving the scanner hopefully in the air, it was decided that no, actually, the second full scan was quite sufficient. We were free to go.

I have been home for an hour. I have drunk tea. I am recovering.

But here is the thing. Amongst all of this, I did something that made me very happy. I booked my next trip away in Evie, my campervan. On the 20th of April, I will be heading to Killin, tucked at the foot of the Ben Lawers mountain range, where the following morning I will be visiting Killin Primary School to collect the ideas that will one day become Book 16 in The Magical Adventures of Florence the Border Collie.

Killin and I have history. Ben Lawers and I have history. It is where I had my heart attack. I am going back, in Evie, on my own terms, with my pens, numerous notebooks, and my bike to talk to a school full of children who have absolutely no idea yet that they are about to become authors.

Now that’s something I can feel dead chuffed about.

By the way, I have informed Mr M that if he requests the pleasure of my company again at the big shop, he must never, ever, ever use the self-scanner when I am with him.

I’d love to know if any of this feels familiar. Please leave a comment below. I can’t be the only one who has had to find a seat in a supermarket.

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