Kate Stewart: No flies on me

Kate Stewart

So there I was , having stopped at a local store to pick up milk and bread.

Exciting stuff, right? The shop also has cabinet food. As I was walking to the counter to pay for my purchases I noticed some rather ginormous, not to mention scrummy-looking, savoury scones. I decided to purchase one for the withered old crone, as a treat.

I opened the cabinet door and reached in to secure one of those big-ass bad boys for bagging when upward of 60-80 fruit flies, unsettled by my motion, took flight from the food they had been lazily resting on for heaven knows how long.

I was shocked and disgusted.

I may have considered turning a blind eye had it been just one or two, but we're talking a swarm here. Their germ-ridden little legs had been on a cross country adventure in that cabinet. Scaling golden crusted scones and plodding the perilous heights of pizza bread, possibly abseiling chunks of pepper and pineapple. For all I know, the fruit fly children could have been playing hide and seek in the pastries, with the sticky fruit acting like quicksand and in their panic to escape drawing them ever closer to their death.

Had I arrived a few minutes later, I would not have been surprised to see a giant slab of bread levitating in mid-air as a result of the fruit fly putting out a call on social media for extra muscle to pull off the food heist of the century.

On a fruit fly scale, this was like the Grand Canyon and I was in no doubt that many hundreds of bathroom breaks had taken place and that the food was no longer fir for human consumption.

I thought it only right to alert shop staff to the situation so they could remove the food from sale. They didn't, though.

While one staff member waved away what fruit flies she could, another placed a vacuum cleaner tube in the cabinet and tried, without much success, to suck the flying pests from the crime scene.

I had more chance of catching the villains in my mouth, which was so wide open in horror my bottom lip was nearly on the floor. Could it get any worse?

It could and it did.

Not always known for my restraint, I went to the counter and 'suggested' that continuing to sell the food was maybe not the best idea. The bolshie bird behind the counter had the audacity, not just to argue the point but to justify it. She told me that it was all down to the warm weather, they were 'just harmless fruit flies' and that I would see the same problem in every food cabinet in town.

I simply couldn't believe that this ignorant woman was trying to justify the unjustifiable. I attempted arguing but she was having none of it. So I decided to vote with my feet and my wallet.

Crawling over fruit and vegetables that can be rinsed and washed is one thing, but insect waste and germs on ready-to-eat food is quite another. Assuming your customers are stupid is worse.

That shop may be happy with their 'harmless fruit fly' policy but they need to know that are no flies on me.

As always, your feedback is welcome, so please email: investik8@gmail.com. Keep smiling loudly, til next week.

Kate Stewart is a politically incorrect columnist who does not suffer fools but does suffer the occasional bout of hayfever.