Who and what might I find in a supermarket at 3.0am in the morning?
Shift workers catching up on their shopping? Insomniacs? Smelly old men dressed in rags trying to keep warm? It had been a hard day but my cupboards were bare. I drove towards the temple of mammon. I felt discombobulated, foolish, embarrassed even and was glad to see the 24 hr petrol station. Somehow that seemed less ridiculous so I squeezed in a few litres and cast a glance towards the store. Do people really go shopping in the middle of the night?

Expecting to find a cathedral of silence with wide aisles and an absent congregation, I entered what looked like the inside of a monster ant hill. Everywhere were boxes, pallets, torn cardboard, damaged packages and an army of grim looking minimum wage slave shelf stackers. No room to move anywhere. No eye contact anywhere. I clutched my shopping list and moved toward the Baked beans. No chance of getting even close: Branston-  ‘four for two pounds’ and Heinz ‘low salt and sugar’ blocked my way. The extravagantly moustachioed young man’s T-shirt read ‘Get a Life’ I think that must have been elsewhere in the store. Leaving Beans till later I looked for Baking powder. No obstructions here just a carpet of snow. An accident with flour awaiting a sweeping brush to happen by. I headed beyond the Lady Chapel where fish should have been piled upon an icy altar. A few chilly pre-packed kippers winked at me.  The bananas huddled together in a corner. Bruised and lonely.

Feeling disoriented and confused I sat on a pallet of ‘value’ minestrone to take stock. In my fantastical haze, it seemed as if that the Rastafarian hovering around the alcohol section was going to drink his fill in the store on the basis of some misunderstanding of the shoplifting regulations. A small crowd of nuns must have nipped in after compline but before matins. How would they pay? Did God issue a debit or a credit card? A little old man and his wife were pushing a trolley laden with ready meals, and a parasol. Wake up! Get your stuff and go.

Back to Baked Beans, Baking powder and Bananas and then the exit. A green light indicated the one automatic check out counter available No actual operator was provided for those uninitiated in the art of bar codes. Swiping my goods across the glass panel, I watched for the correct sum to be recorded on the screen. Beans- fine. Baking powder- OK.  Bananas- no weight recorded. Red light.
Pressing the ‘assistance’ button I waited and waited (and waited). No-one came. The ants still toiled in the aisles but none was interested. Something inside me snapped. I stepped away from the check out counter and carefully emptied my entire trolley into a large messy pile by ‘Customer Service’ and strode out to where the first streaks of light were creeping into the night sky