“Please place bag in bagging area.” Xmas, and off we go, every single one of us, alone or with a support group, to spend too much time and too much money in the great stadiums in every city, every town, every settlement in the national matrix. But actually, I love going to the supermarket. I love their dream worlds of soap and Coke and chops, their confinements: “A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze,” writes Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I could linger all day. There is special cheer right now. The paper bags decorated with Xmas trees and the Cadbury Santa marshmallows ($1.50) are spelling the happiness of December 25.
“Please place item in bagging area.” We, the sheeple, herded first into the fruit and vegetable section, bleating in the cleaning products aisle (this week’s specials include 30% off Sunlight Dishwash Liquid), fleeced at checkout. I love the togetherness of a supermarket. “Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!”, whoops Allen Ginsberg in the greatest poem ever written about supermarkets, A Supermarket in California. I wish they had seating areas, like malls and airports, those two other happy tarmacs of modern life. It would be nice to sit down and contemplate the year about to end – how was your 2024? Did you keep your job, your relationship, your sanity? Supermarkets should provide counselling services. Maybe near frozen goods, to rhyme with the frozen sea within us. We stagger on, New Zealanders doing our best to put food on the table, climbing towards the peak of December 25.
“Unidentified item in bagging area.” Life is mysterious. Every day presents riddles, questions, exams. I think deep thoughts in supermarkets. We all do; supermarkets hum with an ambient IQ, they are a laboratory of decisions. They test our relationship with money. Are you budget-conscious in a supermarket? Do you keep an eye out for specials, stay alert to the stickers in the meat fridges for discounted mince? Do you look at the prices in the biscuit aisles? Think of the anxious mums hissing at their kids, “Put that back!” Consider the worried pensioners hoping for a lucky break with Jimbo’s meat for cats, sometimes priced as high as $7.59, sometimes priced as low as $6 – in William Boyd’s Any Human Heart, one of the best novels of the last century, a broke old codger resorts to eating the cheap meat of dog food, made edible when heated up and supplemented “with the liberal addition of some tomato ketchup and a good jolt of Worcestershire sauce”. It costs a lot of money to be poor. Supermarkets are a daily register of business confidence and the poverty index. The ultimate test is being able to afford December 25.
“Approval needed.” The little nagging AI instructions at self-service checkout might be the only voice some of us hear in a typical day. Supermarkets are constellations of loneliness. They provide company, fluorescent lighting, and Griffins Chocolate Thins ($2.50). They also provide safety. “There’s a world outside your window”, nagged Band Aid in the unhappiest Xmas song ever recorded, “and it’s a world of dread and fear”. Do they know it’s Christmas in Gaza? How many more deaths will add to the genocidal total between now and December 25?
“Do you wish to print a receipt?” I have other wishes – world peace would be nice – but I’ll settle for a receipt. I like going through a detailed record of purchases. A supermarket brings such pleasure. Two survivors of the apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road discover a cache of supermarket goods in a bomb shelter. “Crate upon crate of canned goods. Tomatoes, peaches, beans, apricots. Canned hams. Corned beef … He opened the carton of pears and took out a can and set it on the table and clamped the lid with the can opener and began to turn the wheel.” A tin of peaches will go so well with a Tip Top Ice Cream Polar Pie ($7.50 this week, was $10.49) on December 25.
