Christmas at Tesco 2003

 

 

 

Tesco, in the elegant seaside town of Bexhill (where once, Spike Milligan, stood on the beach in his younger years of National Service, and proclaimed that, in front of him lay the continent, while behind him lay the.... incontinent!) was a veritable picture book of fantasy characters this morning. Anything to take the shoppers' minds off the sheer bedlam, the glimpse of hell that was Tesco at ten o'clock this late December morning.

          The aisles were awash with traffic created by vast seas of metal on wheels (and those were just the Zimmer frames!) Exhausted octogenarians, one of whom had parked his ample bottom on the edge of a freezer cabinet (cheaper than anusol) stood and mopped their brows, while armies of impatient, belligerent toddlers snatched wildly at anything they could grasp, including perspiring and expiring octogenarians. And all this to a cacophony that is Slade and Band Aid, belting out the traditional renderings which have formed the backbone of Christmas in-store music for the past two decades.

          The prize (for stupidity) was won by a small, determined, stocky woman with a ferocious demeanour, manoeuvring a push chair (with built-in stereophonic brats), and two supermarket trolleys, all at the same time; she was responsible for at least two incidents of trolley rage and a catalogue of missed appointments.

"Are we there yet, mum?"

"Shut it, you, and keep peeling them sprouts!"

Snow White, an elegant and beautifully-attired female employee (they generally are) whose fairy tale image is of a pensive maid with apple, examining its quality in outstretched hand, was this morning relegated to the carrot department - boxes and boxes of them - as she struggled to keep ahead of the voracious appetites of the country's fittest and most health-conscious senior citizens.

          Over on the 'booze aisle,' a small woman with enormous silver ears, and sporting a pointed green hat with a bell, and a close-hugging pair of bright red tights, which matched the colour of her cheeks, looked decidedly non-festive; clearly, she'd had enough and wanted to go home and change into something more comfortable. One of the management team had thoughtfully placed a batch of pickled onions and paracetamol between the lagers and bitters. Lateral thinking?

          Checkout number eight, had attracted its own band of pilgrims, anxious to catch sight of the Dish of the Day - an angel, resplendent in virgin white with coat-hanger and tinsel halo. The attention, on this occasion, was focussed on her wings, huge home-made projectiles the size of the 'Gateshead Flasher,' (the monstrous metallic heraldic messenger which startles motorway drivers when they come upon it without prior knowledge.) With much grace, good humour and benevolence, she scanned her way through a mountain of passing produce, pausing only to nod regally and appreciatively towards those who stopped - nay, screeched to a halt - to allow their eyes to adjust and thus absorb the full visual impact of the sacred scanner. The disciples around checkout eight continued to grow and traffic ground to a halt - again.

          As far as the children were concerned, it was a colourful and noisy adventure; for adolescents, an ideal and covert opportunity to become better acquainted with other adolescents of the opposite sex and squirt a bit of deodorant up their sweatshirts without attracting too much attention.

          For young beefcake, aspiring to the first fifteen, it proved a veritable training ground of limitless opportunity and for the elderly, an endurance test leading to the conclusion, once again, that the Second World War still, but only very marginally, had the edge on having tested their powers of endurance to the limit.