Baldyman

This week’s topic is shopping and more to the point my general overall lack of enthusiasm towards it. If I had to make a list of my least favourite activities, shopping would be in a three way battle for top spot alongside washing out peanut butter jars for the purpose of recycling and filling in online tax returns. All of my shopping trips seem to follow a painfully predictable pattern;

Clothes Shopping

1. Pick out clothes items (usually assisted) that I don’t really want for an event that I don’t really want to go to.
2. Attempt to adjust the ill-fitting changing room curtain to prevent any strangers going through the ordeal of glimpsing me in my pants.
3. Experience an unnecessarily candid 360 degree mirror view of my ever increasing waistline and the shop lights reflecting off my baldy bonce (sudden movements can lead to a prism effect and temporary blindness).
4. Realise on the second button (shirts) and just above the knee (trousers) that I haven’t been a ‘medium’ in anything since at least 2010.
5. Conclude that barring a bout of severe food poisoning that there’s more chance of my hair returning than there is my 34 inch waist.

Furniture Shopping

1. Get lured to Ikea by the promise of a cheap breakfast (AM) or a mountain of meatballs (PM).
2. Follow floor arrows around for 2 hours until I reach a state of hypnosis.
3. Lose children in realistic room displays every 15 minutes as my mental strength slowly decreases.
4. Realise that contrary to my belief, we aren’t actually here “just for some wine glasses” when our trolley of choice turns out to be one specifically designed for moving industrial timber.
5. Simultaneously attempt to defy physics and achieve a double hernia by dead lifting a flat packed house into the (clearly not big enough) boot of the car.

(N.B. – DFS can be a less stressful alternative but hurry as I hear the sale ends on Sunday.)

Food Shopping

Now my dislike of this goes well beyond bullet points and was reiterated this week when the lack of a pound coin led to me suffering the traumatic experience of a Saturday afternoon shopping trip to Aldi without the use of a trolley. In truth I have an historical hatred of supermarkets that dates all the way back to 1992 when I made my first ever solo food shop after leaving home to go to university.

It was the year ‘Ebezeener Goode’ was at number one, the first ever text message was sent and most astonishingly I had thick, shoulder length hair and was relatively thin. Strolling through the automatic doors in my Doctor Martin boots and Nirvana t-shirt (I actually liked Take That but was living a lie from day one) my objective was to keep my food costs minimal and my student union beer funds as high as possible. As I made my way around I was therefore delighted to stumble across a gigantic butternut squash in the vegetable aisle (I struggled to lift it such was its size) for the bargain price of 57p. Despite never having seen one before and having no idea what I was supposed to do with it (this would also apply to a lot of other things at university), I was still convinced that this was a masterstroke because;

1. It was cheap.
2. It was huge and would last for a number of different (as yet undetermined squash based) meals.
3. As an unusual and exotic vegetable it was bound to make me stand out as ‘cool & a bit mysterious’ in the shared kitchen at my halls of residence (I had a lot to learn).

As my balanced diet items of Pasta ‘n’ Sauce and Butterscotch Angel Delight (I once ate 3 combined packets in one sitting from a salad bowl with a plastic fork) were being scanned through, I confidently boasted to my fellow shoppers of my upcoming 57p bargain buy. My bravado soon turned to humiliation however when the cashier loudly pointed out that it was in fact priced at 57p per half kilo and that my ‘shrewd’ purchase had actually cost me £3.26 (or in student currency 3.26 pints). To add insult to injury, as I dragged my giant squash back to my shared accommodation I soon discovered that both the fridge and my allocated cupboard space were too small for it to fit in. My aim had been to cast a spell of mystique and irresistibility but after only three days of Freshers’ week I was already being referred to as “the weird guy on the bottom floor with a giant smelly vegetable in his room.”

My fear and trepidation of supermarkets was now clearly transparent and on future visits I would regularly be asked the question, “Would you like some assistance with your packing today?” In normal circumstances I would be grateful to receive such a courteous offer but when you are in the ’10 items or less’ queue with only 4 things in your basket it is not a good sign.

 A move to family life then highlighted my incapability even further with the added responsibility of having to purchase much larger volumes of food under even tighter time constraints. For this reason and the benefit of all involved, I now rarely ever set foot on supermarket premises. Instead I have played to my strengths and now hold what I personally believe to be the pivotal second stage shopping role of ‘bag emptier and puter awayer.’ Unfortunately due to a high level of OCD (that in truth makes the husband from ‘Sleeping With The Enemy’ look laid back) my seemingly simplistic task of filling up the cupboards, fridge and freezer can at times take twice as long as the shopping trip itself.

So with ‘Squashgate’ still a lingering memory in my head, the doors of Aldi parted in front of me just like they had at Tesco all those years ago. Much like Neil Armstrong before me, my first step took me into the unknown as I tentatively entered what looked a harsh, unforgiving and potentially life threatening environment. He had an anti-gravity space suit and the world’s expectations on his shoulders, I had two plastic baskets and an extensive ingredients list for a Year 8 Bolognese Food Tech project. One of these two missions had a high probability of failure and it was unlikely to be the one that included re-entering the earth’s atmosphere at over 24,000 miles per hour.

With customers gridlocked shoulder to shoulder and an ugly standoff developing between a mobility scooter and a double buggy at the stir fry section, there was a sense of unrest and hostility in the air. It resembled the chaos of one of the famous Gladiator battles at the Roman Colosseum but instead of chariots, spears and Russel Crowe we had wonky wheeled trolleys, OAP walking sticks and a David Icke lookalike in a marron shell suit and fluorescent yellow bum bag. As I prepared to walk into this ensuing melee, I was half hoping that a toga clad emperor might pop up from behind the Maris Pipers to give me the thumbs down and put me out of my misery.

My wife showed all her expertise as, with my son in tow, she effortlessly weaved a path through the hordes like an Olympic slalom skier in medal winning form. I on the other hand had fatefully hesitated by the bourbon creams (co-incidentally I assure you) and missed my opportunity to follow suit. Mr Skinny would have struggled to find a sufficient sized gap to squeeze through so as you can imagine Mr Not So Skinny with a basket in each hand stood very little chance.

Like a big, bald, indecisive hedgehog at the side of the motorway, I finally stepped forward, shut my eyes and prayed for a collision free passage. Having rendezvoused with the advance party we now made our way to the relative safe haven of what I like to call the Aldi ‘X Files’ aisle, a collection of unconnected merchandise the likes of which not even the crappiest of car boot sales could conjure up. This week’s randomly assembled delights included;

• 3-in-1 Shower Resistant Dog Coats (available in red/pink/navy blue).
• Peppa Pig Musical Band Set (trumpet / drum / tambourine).
• Deluxe Marine Safety Kit (fire extinguisher / blanket combo).
• 4 Person, Octagon Inflatable Garden Hot Tub (795 litre water capacity).

Then came the shattering bombshell that two key ingredients had somehow slipped through our culinary net and I now faced the apocalyptic prospect of retracing my steps to locate a ‘medium sized’ courgette (what do I gauge this against?) and some tomato paste (which I could only hope would be more flavoursome than the fish variety that for some reason filled sandwiches in the mid-eighties). Composing myself momentarily by the 4HD Home Security CCTV Kits (£149.99 Weekly Special Buy – ‘You can’t put a price on peace of mind’) I unconvincingly set off on my quest for the two missing items. As my wife caught my eye on the way passed, her expression immediately told me that she knew as well as I did that there was more chance of me returning with Lord Lucan and the cure for the common cold.

With my cheeks puffing, my feet shuffling and both baskets scraping close to the floor, I now resembled a particularly poor entrant on the ‘The World’s Strongest Man’ who’d had his pair of giant tractor tyres substituted for some cut priced tins of chunky chopped tomatoes. With a seemingly AWOL packing area and a cashier scanning things through like someone had pressed x32 fast forward on the Sky remote, my chances of survival did not look positive. It was abundantly clear that, much like Tom Cruise wading forwards from the shallow end in a swimming pool, I would very soon be out of my depth and in need of assistance.

An early lapse in concentration saw things escalate at an alarming rate, with my arms soon laden with produce like an overloaded ‘Crackerjack’ contestant complete with a cabbage tightly tucked under my chin (49p from the ‘Super 6’). Luckily my wife’s in built female multi-tasking skills (reading the newspaper whilst on the toilet apparently doesn’t count) instinctively kicked in and the bags for life (newly purchased as the other 17 had obviously been left in the boot) were quickly packed to perfection and my ordeal was finally at an end.

I think it is safe to say that when it comes to the skills, tactics and historic results associated with shopping, that men and women are in completely different leagues. In fact to emphasise this using a footballing analogy;

• Women are FC Barcelona at the top of Spain’s La Liga.
• Men are the Dog & Duck 4^th XI at the bottom of Screwfix Division 9.

• Women play at a ground with a long history of success and drama on the pitch.
• Men play at a ground with a long history of broken glass and dog shit on the pitch.

• The women’s star player is internationally loved, lights up a match with their skills and turns up the pressure on the opposition.
• The men’s star player is electronically tagged, lights up a fag with their match and turns up drunk wearing the same clothes as the night before.

• Women are 5 time European Club Champions.
• Men once reached the 2^nd Round of the Sunday League Cup by virtue of a walkover when the opposition were deliberately given an incorrect postcode.

In other news my book is now at the editing stage with the publishers and following a successful visit to the local infant school I have my first young fan that regularly recognises me in the street. Saying that, I assume he remembers me as the author from the book reading but it’s equally possible that he’s just a fan of EastEnders and thinks that I’m Phil Mitchell.

Thanks again for reading.