I read with interest this week that the COVID pandemic has changed the way we shop for groceries forever.
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And I thought to myself, thank God, because it hasn't been great to now.
Too often I've hit the supermarket not once, not twice, not 15 times to get all the ingredients required for a particular meal.
Because what's spag bol without spag? Or bol? Or the bloody parmesan cheese!!!!
Forgot the parmie, again.
So it's back to the shops vowing next time I'll pay more attention to the list. Actually, vowing next time I'll actually take a list.
Scary what a collander human memory is.
Not even a collander really because that suggests something gets retained other than the collander. More a compost bin.
Even with a list it's easy to overlook things.
Particularly if someone else has scribbled things down in their version of shopping hieroglyphics.
H20 krk (water crackers), Pfl (plain flour), &^%*&^% (???? could be smoked tuna).
There's no doubt the pandemic has impacted the traditional weekly grocery shop.
Signs include it's become a monthly supply prepper mission.
Complete with sanitised well wishes about hand hygiene and having your affairs in order should you not return, mutated.
The irony was that in shopping less, you tended to shop more, because you had more to find/forget.
And given you might be going to different supermarkets to avoid hotspots, or track down items, you didn't know where anything was.
And you were hunting in a mask, wheezing and fogging up like a humid Darth Vader fussed up about having to scan in everywhere you go.
With a certain sense of hysteria about social distancing that nearly guaranteed you missed something on the list. If you took one
And thus sending you back into the germ warfare shopping aisles.
Nullifying any attempt to reduce your exposure.
Because as bad as getting COVID might seem, it'd be nothing compared to returning home without enough yoghurt. For the next month.
And not just any garden variety yoghurt.
No, it'd have be pot set. Perhaps organic, and maybe with a specific lactobacillus count requiring you to go to several stores or pathology labs to source.
So long as it was at a good price. But what chance that with fancy pants yoghurt?
Yeah, look, the more things change, the more some things stay the same when it comes to consumer pedantry and overlooked grocery stuff.
And as we emerge from our bunkers by apparently not emerging from our bunkers and staying at home to click and collect, hopefully home delivery services will provide that convenience and instant gratification some hermits crave.
But it will all depend on who does the clicking, I think.
Otherwise it's gonna be the same lament come collect time with a string of forgotten items too long to list.
