Sunday 12 June 2005

Supermarket

I don't often go to the supermarket on a Sunday, preferring usually to not go further than the front door - truely using it as a day of rest and total laziness. I have a much greater understanding now of the long Sunday's of my childhood where we slumped huffily round the house hoping one of the parents would for a moment put down the paper and entertain us, rather than expecting one of those involved and slow moving epic biblical movies to do that for them (amazing how long a day can seem).

Today, however, I was in need of some grocery essentials which I could no longer do without - milk, bread, oatmeal (gotten into a habit of eating porriage on the weekend - reminds me of my grandfather), which sadly meant I had to firstly get dressed and secondly face the shopping aisles. It does give one the opportunity to check on the progress of the new shopping pavilion (rumoured to be a mini-Ikea, Homebase and Dixons - I'm truely terrified what will happen to the traffic on Green Lanes if this turns out to be the case - its already gridlocked in Harringay).

Its not so bad when you know what you want. They don't move the supermarket around as much as they used to. I limit myself to a basket because I have to carry it home by foot. And I was just picking up the last item from the toilettries section when the door alarm went off and a stream of men from across the store ran out after what I suspected was a shoplifting suspect.

The checkout chicks and dicks were all a babble of excitement. One who had been in the chase had returned and was recounting the tale - he'd run to his car thrown the goods in and was attempted to get it started before the security guards and crowd of shop assistants got there. Shortly after this a man was marched back into the store and put into a small staff only room, guarded by a security guard and one of the beefier shop boys.

I recognised the man - he had been carrying some kind of electrical good (maybe a DVD player) around the corner of an aisle and excitedly calling out to what I had thought was his wife, "they have this!" in the opposite direction to me at one point.

The babbling carried on while waiting for the police and pending a little in-store investigation, searching for reciepts, questioning the perpetrator. The security guard at one point rushing over to the entrance to accost another person who must have been a known shoplifter, wheeling him round and accompanying him off the premises.

Anyway, despite having the slowest checkout girl in possibly the history of checkouts I was still all packed up and ready to go before the inevietable conclusion, so I left before the cops arrived.

No comments: