Jumbo

Since BFG has requested tales of my supermarket adventures and since I, your writer, clearly exist only to serve - check (no pun intended) this shit out for the next exciting non-travel installment of my adventures.

So Saturday found me walking through a beautiful afternoon with not much to fill it. Since I had no frisbee and, even if I had a frisbee, no friends functioning at this hour to throw it too, I decided to walk through the parks near my house and launch my second, full scale assault on Jumbo, the biggest freaking supermarket I have ever been into.

The first time I attempted Jumbo I was at a distinct disadvantage. I had only been awake a few hours. I was feeling delicate. I had grossly underestimated the size of my prey and I was also kind of starving. Jumbo loomed up at me out of the dark, like a sudden Northland which was built only to house a supermarket and a sort of backyard-furniture type store. The first time, I followed the crowds whilst wondering if perhaps I should be dropping stones on the floor, hansel and gretel style, so that I could find my way out. The supermarket, once I found it, was so enormous that initially I wasnt even sure it was a supermarket because the food was hidden behind fifty lanes containing stockings, beds, office chairs and mattresses. Taking a breath and walking in I was unable to even find a basket (I assumed this was because Jumbo patrons shopped on a similar scale to their surroundings) and so spent forty minutes roaming amongst the endless cheese aisles and "food of the world" (where "world" was understood to be primarily America and "food" understood to be either tea, jam or, in America´s overrepresented case, endless packets of taco seasoning and mexican salsas in a can. A can?) aisles, not being offered any food from any of the sundry tasting stands scattered through the aisles, and attempting to balance my meagre stash of instant noodles and fresh bread rolls together. Eventually I conceded defeat and fled through the checkout and back into a more human sized world.

This time though, this time would be different. Armed with knowledge gleaned from Miranda French´s excellent "Bad Times in Buenos Aires" I was on the look out for trolley filled with meat dripping blood on the supermarket floor. I was keeping my eyes peeled for outbreaks of bronca amongst the natives and for trolleys deserted midshop because their owners simply could not take it anymore.

Disappointingly I found that meat seems to be much better clingwrapped now than back in the mid-90s and the lack of dripping blood really did manage to keep the shopping mood on the up and up. I did find a few abandoned shopping trolleys though and snagged on so as to keep my disguise as a regular shopper together. I wandered the aisle luxuriating in the ability to pick packets up and then put them back again. I thought dreamily about Muriel´s mother from Muriel´s Wedding and was glad I was wearing better shoes. I prodded the meat in each of the three epic rows of freezers that it was kept in and wondered what "16%" gaseoses meant.

I fondled the cheese in the four different places it was kept, spending special time with the real, actual, rounds of camembert and brie that I found. And little roles of goats cheese! Chevre! The fetta was the same shitty cubes that they have everywhere else though, unfortunately.

Eventually I got tired of pushing my trolley, filled with a single bottle of canola oil that I had no intention of buying, around and ditched it near the checkout without a backwards glance. Pretending to be like some 21st century version of Barthes is awesome.