A Trip to The Supermarket

Commonplace Newsletter #107

Photo by Nathália Rosa on Unsplash

The problem, if you are not careful, is that you can end up living your life on autopilot. The days eek out slowly but the years pass by in the blink of an eye and you wonder at the end where did all that time go? What happened?

I was reminded of this just yesterday. It was a slow day and the weather wasn’t great- and as I returned from a forty five minute round trip to buy some groceries- I realised that I had little to no recollection of what had just happened. Sure I’d walked to the supermarket, I’d purchased my list of items and I had walked home hood-up against the wind and drizzle and weighed down by my backpack. I could easily deduce all of that but couldn’t actually remember anything specific. What had I thought, who had I walked past, what had I been looking at and noticed and felt on that errand¹? I had no idea. And this was a bit of a worry. This is my one and only life, and for that brief period of it at least I had been sleepwalking. I had been away in my head somewhere while the real world drifted by unnoticed. How often do I do this, I wondered. And conversely, how often do I truly pay attention?

As I stored away my purchases in freezer compartments and fridge shelves these realisations dawned on me. It was one of those occasions where the creeping dread of awareness is felt in your chest, like a kind of foreboding. I resolved² then and there to pay more attention. To truly be present in my own life, for better or worse. The standard alternative to this, i.e. a life of fantasising and regretting and blaming and daydreaming and pondering and recalling was proving to be less and less viable with each new day. Presence is ultimately the only option, as far as I can see. And so I decided that tomorrow (which is to say today³) I would return to that supermarket and do the whole thing again but this time I would tackle the quotidian activity of food shopping with my eyes wide open and see what a difference it made.

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Well the weather’s better for a start. That’s something.

Maybe yesterday I didn’t pay attention because there was little to pay attention to in the wind and rain. Whereas in this post-lunch sunshine there are all sorts of things that catch the eye- the odd pockets of people sat on benches and on blankets on the grass to my left, and beyond them deeper into the park a gangly looking late-teen hitting a bent-wrist jumpshot that rattles the metal net of the hoop. I could argue that today there are things actually worth taking notice of but this would be side stepping the issue. Attention is not contingent, it is a skill to be cultivated always and not just when it is easier or more convenient to do so.

Onwards. A right turn and then a left and then up the same old hilly partly pedestrianised street that I always walk up, past the ground floor flat of the eccentric who tapes all kinds of slogans and posters and newspaper cuttings to his living room window for the benefit of passing pedestrians such as myself, past the fluffy white neighbourhood cat with his collar and bell, who like all cats seems to have this art of living business figured out in ways that us humans can only dream of. And then at the top of the hill a right turn and then a left, following a bag-for-life toting pedestrian to the entrance to the supermarket.

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I could write an entire essay about just the outside of this supermarket. About how year by year the cars are growing larger and larger, about how people now routinely drive around alone in what in the not-too-distant-past would have been considered a preposterously oversized vehicle. I remember not too long ago when people nipped to the shops in little Volkswagen Golfs and Fiat 500s and Nissan Micras (assuming they weren’t walking or cycling), but in this car park today the majority of vehicles are gargantuan Land Rovers and Hyundai Tuscons and Kia Sportages⁴. Now uncharitably one could assume that cars are getting bigger to accommodate drivers and passengers getting bigger. But as I watch people enter and exit their cars I am surprised by how many of the owners are quite short and elderly, barely able to see over the steering wheel of their tank. Do they use booster seats? Do they give any thought to the carnage they could wreak if they had a stroke or a heart attack behind the wheel of one of these behemoths versus in one of the aforementioned little runarounds that have evidently fallen out of vogue⁵?

I could also mention how one of the main reasons why I shop at this supermarket (beyond its relative nearness) is because there are hardly any discarded trolleys⁶ left lying around outside. Forget about that classic philosophy exercise with the lever and people tied to railway tracks, the real Trolley Problem is why more people can’t take a few seconds extra effort to put their shopping trolley back with all the others rather than simply abandoning it before driving away. We all know that this is the civil thing to do and no one is too busy to not be able to do it. And yet so often people can’t be arsed, presumably because there is no punishment or law against not bothering to do this basic pro-social act. But as I said- at this supermarket people do put their trolleys back⁷- which on reflection probably plays quite a large part in why I shop here rather than elsewhere. I’ll pay slightly more for eggs and milk if I will be shopping alongside people who pass this particular test of basic civility.

In fact with such observations as a jumping off point you could write an entire book about the supermarket and what it says about us as a society, let alone an essay. And I would perhaps consider doing so were it not for the fact that the Nobel Laureate Annie Ernaux has beaten me to the punch with her recently translated into English book Look at the Lights, My Love. But it proves my point. Paying close attention to normal life can give you enough to write about for the rest of your life.

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It’s quiet inside, as far as it goes. Yes the lights are too bright but at least they don’t pipe music in here, which goes a long way in my book.

All I have on my list is broccoli, butter, eggs and washing up liquid but I’ve made the schoolboy error of shopping whilst hungry and so confining myself to those four items probably won’t happen. In fact it definitely won’t and I’m not even going to pretend otherwise. So before doing anything else I head for the section near the entrance that’s there for people who are running in on their lunchbreak. There’s a coffee machine, sandwiches, bottled water and cans of pop, chocolate bars and equally sweet nut bars that masquerade as being healthy, and packets of crisps. I grab a salt beef and mustard mayonnaise sandwich which is commendable damage limitation given how hungry I am.

Onward to the fruit and veg section. I pick up a broccoli crown (shrink wrapped in plastic) and contemplate buying a four pack of apples (also wrapped in plastic). But all of the vast display of apples- Envy, Jazz, Braeburn, Smitten- are from either New Zealand or South Africa which both seem excessive distances for a piece of fruit to travel. I leave them be and resolve to make up for lost time when our UK apple season begins in a month or two.

I snake past the meat section, past the fishmonger’s counter (I got all of the meat in yesterday) and head for the dairy aisle. A child on his dad’s shoulder looks down on me as I take the corner and he does that happyshout thing that kids of that age do where they babble on nonsensically yet boldly and are fully in their element. Dad looks like he is in the stage of sleep deprivation where you appear quite zen. He nearly walks into a trolley that a retirement age guy has left momentarily to price up packs of deli meat by holding them extremely close to his squinting eyes. Dad, his son on his shoulders and the squinting pensioner are all wearing flipflops which strikes me as significant somehow.

To the butter. The fridges hum like they are in pain or at least distress which is an appropriate soundtrack as Kerrygold has gone up in price again. Politicians and newscasters can massage statistics however they want but the prices in supermarkets like this don’t lie. I pick up a couple of bricks anyway because what else can I do?

Stomach rumbling at the prospect of that sandwich I impulsively grasp one of those little latte in a can things. A moment of weakness. They bring back a near-Proustian memory of when such canned cold caffeine drinks were only available in Japanese canteen shops in big cities. I recall the period of my life over fifteen years prior whilst at university in London when I would buy a lunch of sushi and the then novel canned sweet coffee from the Japan Centre and go and sit in the nearby St James Park and read a book completely unrelated to my studies. This memory pulls me to this supermarket’s sushi counter. I stop myself from doing a single, long, incredulous whistle at the prices.

Maybe something from the bakery instead- but it’s late afternoon now and all of the stuff is either gone or tired looking. I get a sliced sourdough half-loaf to toast for breakfast.

Next, I pick up a dozen eggs (no need to remark on the price increase on these as I’m sure you are already painfully aware) and as I crouch down for them I spot the off-white floor tiles with little flecks of terracotta orange in, a mosaic like effect which I may very well have been the first person to ever truly notice, let alone write about.

Finally I pick up the washing up liquid from the cleaning products aisle and quickwalk past the newspapers and magazines as I head to pay up. Even while trying to avert my gaze from the display I can’t help but take in the juxtaposition of myriad headlines about an apparently unfolding baby killer scandal alongside the tranquil covers of Country Life, Gardeners World and the Radio Times, beacons of a fading middle class respectability.

I skip the bank of self-service checkouts⁸ and their chorus, their row, row, row your boat-esque round of lady robot voices saying ‘please scan an item or press finish and pay’, ‘please follow the instructions on the card reader’, ‘please wait- the assistant is coming’ over and over and over. I’d rather pay the price in inconvenience and be served by an actual human being at one of the checkouts.

I only have a few items so I go to the basket only kiosk where they also sell the shuttered away cigarettes and the readily visible vape accessories and Zyn tins. Only one woman in front of me. I queue behind her. She asks for a medley of a dozen different scratch cards. I knew then I’d made a huge mistake. She produces a sheaf of old Lotto tickets from her purse and gets them scanned. No winners. She buys more lines, some for tonight’s draw, some for the draw on Wednesday. I remember that this paying attention and being present thing can have its downside. My stomach rumbles. The woman pays for this week’s instalment of her gambling problem with a handful of notes and coins and leaves. I step up to the counter. The cashier and I exchange a knowing glance while saying all that needs to be said without saying much at all. A fleeting moment in time. This is life.

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1. It’s not that such an everyday task should induce dramatic feelings and lead to the creation of vivid memories but surely there should be a baseline engagement with and taking in of your surroundings, right? Otherwise how different are we from robots?

2. Or rather re-resolved because this isn’t the first time I have been hit by that existential wake up call of- What. Am. I. Doing… in the aftermath of a period of drifting through life.

3. Which is to really say a few days ago, assuming you are reading this on the first day of its publication at thomasjbevan.substack.com. Or it could be months or even years later if you are reading this in a subsequent print edition. The time travel aspect of writing and reading can be a joyous and also disconcerting facet of our existence.

4. It’s not all massive SUVs and 4x4s, but there are so many more than there ever were before. It feels like a sign of people’s increasingly fearful and consumerist states of mind.

5. I don’t drive so I guess I missed the mimetic memo about how oversized cars are the fashionable thing to ride around in. As a neutral observer it is baffling though, and seems to fly in the face of the perpetual talking points of climate change and air pollution. Perhaps that is the appeal of such vehicles- a kind of stick-it-to-the-man rebelliousness, but I don’t think that’s it. So many of these SUV drivers here today are using reusable bags, recycling their glass bottles (whilst their engines are still running) and have trolleys filled with organic food and higher welfare meat and so on. There seems to be an extraordinary inability to connect the dots here, no matter which side of the various ideological fences these people are on.

6.  For my American readers a shopping trolley is what you would call a shopping cart. I gather people in some of the southern states refer to this as a buggy. Don’t say I don’t make the effort to meet my readers halfway.

7. For my UK readers, yes this is a Waitrose that I’m shopping at- well done if you guessed correctly. It’s the only supermarket within walking distance of my flat- and, if you don’t own a car you can afford to shop wherever you like.

8. In a now-abandoned precursor to this essay I wrote about self-service checkouts at quite phenomenal length driven by a time when I went to a local four aisle convenience shop to buy alcohol and had to wait for a full five minutes for a human staff member to show up and verify I was over 18. No other customers, no staff just me and a machine in what was one of the most mundane yet alienating experiences of my life. However, in spite of that hook, I could never quite make the essay work.