 Lost
in a labyrinth of neon-lit aisles, whose layout defies all logic, the older shopper cannot
help but disapprove of the amount of choice, the seemingly endless variety of the same
product.
Not that quantity means quality, for they know that
nothing tastes or smells as good as it used to. Authenticity
has been replaced by hype, spin, giant-sized strawberries with the consistency and flavour
of cotton wool. Sadly, younger shoppers,
with their undeveloped tastebuds, don't know the difference and buy with indecent
enthusiasm.
Sell-by dates
are another source of irritation. An obvious
capitalist conspiracy to make the hapless consumer buy more and more, they are anathema to
anyone who waited for a tin to explode before deciding that it was past its prime.
My mother, a child of the war who didn’t see a
banana until she reached puberty, belonged to this category. Obsessed with waste, she found it impossible
to throw anything away. Once I went
travelling around the world for a whole year only to come back to the same mouldy
leftovers and bowls of dripping in the fridge (well they looked the same anyway).
Packaging is
part of conspiracy to separate the younger from the older.
It's not necessarily lack of dexterity that makes
unpackaging foods so distressing an experience, it's also sheer impatience.
The young have many years ahead of them. If you're older, you can't afford to waste all
that time tearing off unnecessary wrapping. To
add further insult, older people know that it is a deliberate attempt to deceive. You buy a family pack only to find that one
wrapping gives way to another until you are left with a meal the size of a shrivelled
peanut.
 These
instant triggers for paranoia are made worse by the fact that consumerism has become such
an intensely competitive business. You are
what you buy, or how much you buy, or where you buy. You feel righteous buying from the
organic shelves, and guilty when you don't. Or
it can be the other way round if you can afford the higher prices and your next-door
shopper can't.
In the dark Darwinian hell of the modern supermarket,
human contact is kept to a minimum, eyes rarely meet, words are seldom exchanged. A chorus of impatient tuts accompanies your
awkward fumblings to find the right change at the till.
Mobiles screech as desperate spouses ring from the car park, where they have been
left to languish in an overheated car. People
voyeuristically study the contents of each other’s baskets, passing judgement on
packets of sticky buns and finding tragic overtones in the single lamb chop.
It is at times like these that we
remember, with convulsions of guilt, our local languishing
greengrocer. Next week, we'll make a
special effort and buy our fruit and veg from his stall.
Honest.
You can also take a look at previous
personal views by Harriet Ewe:
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