adventure in the aisle

I'm fairly sure that, in the history of mankind, not many people have written an essay on the topic of grocery stores.

I hereby proudly present mine! ( Don't ask me why I have one. )

If you visit a grocery store in a neighbouring country, no matter how closely that country's national character and habits match those of your own, there will be completely different goods on display. There will be the unavoidable Cokes and Heinekens and Rice Krispies on display, of course, but most of the staple foods are indigenous to that country - bread and milk and eggs are of brands that look altogether alien to foreign eyes. Putting them in your shopping basket makes you feel adventurous and you cannot help but think that the milk will have at least a slightly unfamiliar taste to it. You take forever to find the kind of bread that you like and choosing a chocolate bar is a delicious gamble ( at least if you're brave enough to avoid the Snickers and Mars ).

When you live in the same country for a long time, shopping for food gets boring. You pick the same stuff you've always bought, with few variations. In a new country, after the adventure of the first few weeks, you start to hone in on a few items that you've discovered and learnt to love, wonderfully different and delicious as they are, until you've done it for long enough and that country's food gets boring too. Coming back to a well-known country after you've been away for a while is heavenly in its own right, and you revel in buying all the well-known and much-missed food items you see on every shelf.

In  my present hometown, I have three grocery stores that I frequent. One is a supermarket, the one I feel I should go to as it has the lowest prices and I'm on a tight budget - but it's large and I get exhausted wandering around it when I'm already worn out from a day at work. It also has ridiculously long queues at the check-outs. I stand there waiting and remember fondly Tesco's in the UK where queues were simply not allowed to form - but then I find that I have there, in that queue, a rare moment of being able to just "stand and stare". And watch people.

Then there is the smaller grocery store - part of a chain, like all the others - which is quirky because it has all the hustle and bustle of a convenience store attached to a petrol station but is also on a street corner in the middle of the city. Because of its long opening hours, petrol and tiny café it attracts all kinds of people (and I do love places where there are precisely all kinds of people). It's on my way home from work so this is often where I end up buying my bread and eggs and bananas.

And lastly, there is the other little corner shop, on a different street corner and slightly removed from the city centre, tiny and quiet. I never see anyone I know there. This is my guilty pleasure shop, the place where I go occasionally on rainy days when I sit at home watching DVDs and have a sudden urge for a bag of crisps, chocolate or a can of sweet cider. Then I walk there along the seafront, in old clothes and no make-up to indulge myself. And the girl at the check-out always smiles at me.

( And yes, I know I'm supposed to buy only locally produced, organic and dolphin-friendly food. But the people who tell me so have apparently never had to starve. )