Going on line with stores like Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsbury's you first have to obtain a slot when the store will deliver the groceries. It could be days or maybe weeks before a slot becomes available and so the old urge to nip out to buy something you don't have to fulfil the ingredients of a cake you want to bake is not an option. The food you would purchase spontaneously, the bread, the butter or sugar have to be on a list and be part of the preparation, at best in a few days time. It's not the wartime rationing our parents experienced but it is a consideration and a concentration towards food which has crept into our lives.
Shopping on line is also addictive as you sit, on an empty stomach examining the marketeers concept of how the contents will satisfy our craving for food. Shall we take one or two and what about one of these. The mind goes into overdrive as it ranges over the meals you might want in the weeks ahead. Being a man who was not used to doing the family shopping and who knew better than to trail around after my wife as she examined each item, painstakingly considering it's use in the meals she planned, I on the other hand as a person now living on my own knew the basics of a basic diet and made the act of shopping a quick, in and out process, one of these or two of those and out to the checkout.
Now online I salivate at the sight and the range of food on offer. At the click of my keypad key I traverse the aisles, those look good and what about some of these. As your finger does the shopping and the mind becomes mesmerised by the number of options you seamlessly have only the bill reminds us as it surreptitiously continues to rise and you find yourself spending far more than you ever intended.
The stores seem to have taken this opportunity in our physical absence to down size everything, to shrink the size or limit the number inside the packaging. I seem like a Guliver these days handling smaller and smaller portions of what I remember used to be the size of an item. From washing powder to cornflakes the boxes either remain the same but with the contents taking up half the space in the box, or the boxes get smaller. Shopping in the store one felt the size and condition of the apples or bananas, online you are in a take it or leave it situation and inevitably you take it fearing the hassle of returning groceries and the stigma of being blackballed when you come to try for a slot to shop again.
The goods arrive at 10.00 pm, the doorbell rings and on opening the door the first crate is on the doorstep followed by another and another and another. Distancing is the name of the game as the driver and I do a pirouette, look at each other with different eyes now the virus in in our midst. Taking care to stand back the delivery man watches as I scramble to empty his crates and take the groceries in doors. It's a mad rush, conscious he is keen to be on his way to his next delivery at 11pm I hurry and dump the bags on the floor of the hallway and wish our cheery van driver goodnight. The sorting then begins, frozen into the freezer, veg into the veg rack and the other stuff we will leave until morning as I retire, shattered to bed.
It's a right old palaver but at least we aren't like those millions of poor buggers who go to bed hungry every night and who see no end to their hunger. How their eyes would open and wonder at the Aladdin's Cave of goodies magically transported to our door. For them there is no magic to life, only a struggle to stay alive.
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