A Caveman With Something to Smile About

As a man I am a natural hunter-gatherer. For 2 million years it was my male ancestor’s duty to head out of their caves, with a spear in one hand and a shopping basket in the other, skewering anything that so much as blinked in order to provide their families with the food they needed to survive.

It is therefore in my blood to be a provider of food and I know this to be true not just because it says so in the history books, but also because one of the fondest memories from my childhood was chasing wild rabbits around a field with a garden hoe because, instinctively, it seemed like the right thing to do (I must mention that no animals were injured as, unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough). And thinking about it, maybe the reasoning behind me doing this was less because ‘it seemed like the right thing to do’ and more because I am not quite right…

So anyway, with this urge to gather food engraved in my DNA, why is it that the thought of heading to the supermarket once a week instantly fills me with a powerful sense of dread? I think it’s because the fun has been taken out of being the provider.

Long gone are the days when having meat for tea involved shish-kebabing a deer to death, and this, especially for the deer’s sake, is not necessarily a bad thing. But compared to that, modern day shopping is boring. Trailing around the labyrinth of aisles at your local Tescos for example, is a horrendous and mind numbing process, so much so that at some point in recent history the powers-at-be had to place the word ’super’ in front of the word ‘market’ to attempt to make it sound vaguely exhilarating.

My experience of food shopping is generally something along these lines:

Arrive at the store and spend first quarter of an hour trying to find a parking space. Eventually park up and head into the store, only to find that the automatic door won’t open as I’m trying to get into the designated ‘exit’. I am a customer. Therefore I am allegedly always right, yes? No. God forbid I try to enter the store to give them my money using the wrong door. Attempts to enter the exit are met with trapped limbs and funny looks from the nearest security guard. Already, I am not exactly having fun.

Once inside I head to claim a trolley, before quickly realising that I don’t have the necessary £1 coin to hand in order to rent this awkward and unwieldy cousin of the wheelbarrow. Basket it is then. Having passed through the obligatory entrance area consisting of magazines, and cigarettes, I then find myself in children’s clothing (I mean the section, not literally ‘in children’s clothing’). Do I really need to be here? No, but the crayon-wielding ape who designs shop floor layout insists that this is the first section I am guided through on my food shopping experience/ordeal.

I continue my Pacman-like negotiation of the aisles, when almost instantly find myself in household goods and electronics. Do I want an all-in-one remote control that will simultaneously control everything from my DVD player to my smoke alarm? No. Do I want a scientific calculator? No. How about a 52″ plasma TV? Yes, but if I had the money to buy one, it wouldn’t be from somewhere that also sells raw fish and something called ‘Mr Brain’s Pork Faggots’ in the very next aisle.

I have already been in the shop for 10 minutes and I am yet to encounter anything which could even be mistaken for food. It is at this point where I begin to lose hope. My eyes glaze over and I begin to lose any initial optimism about my shopping trip. I feel demoralised and confused, and this, I believe, is how Tescos want me to feel as I lose all hope and succumb to the urge to just pile my basket high with whatever comes to hand, regardless of the price, and quickly head to the nearest checkout.

So in an almost hypnotised state, I fill my basket with the nearest products to hand and it is at this exact moment that I develop an entirely new method of walking. Under the weight of my basket, and as if possessed by one of the supermarket’s own wonky-wheeled trolleys, I begin to travel in the style of a drunken chess bishop, staggering wildly in diagonal lines. Hope is in sight however, I can see the checkout, and I have a full basket. I career diagonally up to the checkout with the shortest queue, greeted warmly with the phrase “sorry love, this checkout’s closed”. Christ.

Narrowly avoiding joining a queue behind a woman paying for £58 worth of shopping in vouchers. I spot a sign that says ’self service checkouts’. Perfect. Just one short diagonal journey and i arrive at ’self service’ encountering no queue whatsoever.

I eagerly begin swiping my food across the bar code scanner. Wow. I feel like I’m living in the future when suddenly the machine begins engaging me in a bizarre one-way dialogue reminiscent of something out of Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. The robot begins shouting. “MISSING ITEM IN BAGGING AREA”. Oh Jesus.

What now? Is it going to summon a Dalek like robo-colleague to exterminate me? No. It simply continues bellowing at me until a woman who’s name badge says ‘Maureen’, and is seemingly the supermarket equivalent of tech-support, administers the robo-checkout with a swipe card which seems to hit it like a shot of morphine to the jugular. It rapidly returns to it’s former passive self, a subservient slave to it’s human masters.

Now, I am easily distracted at the best of times, so having encountered the self-service checkout my mind begins to ponder many questions. Is this the beginning of the end? Will I soon be using these things in every shop? What if the machine refuses to sell me my food? Will I be forced into hunger by a cruel robot master-race?

And what about the checkout folk who will be put out of a job by these futuristic contraptions? Are we on the brink of a second industrial revolution with Luddite-esque Tesco employees taking a hammer to these things? I don’t know, but while I have been glazed over considering the future of humanity, Maureen has finished scanning and bagging my purchases… not so self-service after all.

I pay for my goods, and as I dart out of the door marked ‘No Exit’ I am almost crushed by the automatic doors. Is this a coincidence, or is the robo-checkout’s last effort at revenge for getting it in trouble with Maureen? Who knows. All I care about is getting home.

I begin walking to the car park, shopping bags in hand, looking like a contestant in World’s Strongest Man, about to blow a blood vessel during the ‘Car Carry’ event. A man with a clipboard asks me if I can “spare a few moments”? I eagerly reply “Yes. Of course”. I explain to him that if he would like to hold my shopping bags while I stand here, I would love nothing more than to answer his inane questions about my gas supplier. The conversation ends there and I am permitted to make my way back to the car.

I load my shopping in my boot and head for the exit, where I realise that I didn’t get my car parking ticket scanned at the checkout and I am eventually forced to tail-gate another car out through the barrier in order to avoid leaving my car impounded in the supermarket car park for the rest of eternity.

Finally I arrive home filled with resentment, and baring a renewed hatred of the food shopping experience. I unpack my shopping only to find that during my semi-unconscious supermarket stupor, I have just purchased two bags filled exclusively with Mr Brain’s Pork Faggots.

Shit.

Give me a spear and a cave any day.

BONUS THOUGHT: Why not combine Tescos Online with Xbox Live and allow me to literally hunt my food down in a shoot-em-up computer game, the spoils of which can then be delivered to my door the next day.