This week my usual trip to the supermarket has left me feeling that I might have been conned. 

The item responsible for this is orange that you dilute with water to drink.
I usually buy the supermarket’s own brand - it’s cheap and it tastes OK.  But this week they’ve changed it.  It has been replaced with ’super-concentrate’ which costs more.  The old was 59p for 1 litre.  The new is 83p for 750ml.  But you are supposed to only need half as much.  So when you do the maths it works out at almost exactly the same cost.  The trouble is that it’s really hard to put less concentrate into your glass - so you use more - so it costs you more.
And on top of this, they have removed all the other orange juice from the shelves - they are forcing me to buy this product or go to another shop for an alternative.
No choice and a rip-off.  This isn’t the first example of this kind of behaviour over the years - and it certainly won’t be the last. 

But I keep on shopping there.  I suppose the bigger picture is that the supermarket has so moulded my habits that I find it hard to imagine an alternative - now that’s real power.

I’ve noticed how grumpy I can get when shopping - especially in the supermarket.

I approach it as a military operation: I decide my menu for the week, write the list to reflect this, then write it in order of the goods in the local store.  I could whizz round and have it done in fifteen minutes.

But there are a few things that get in the way:  firstly, the family - they are always looking at things that aren’t on the list; secondly, other shoppers - they get in the way, stopping to chatter and letting their trolleys block the aisles; and thirdly, me! - yes that’s right - I distract myself, I just can’t help it.  That’s the trouble with all these places - all that temptation.

But it does make me grumpy.  Maybe if I shopped on my own and there were no other people in the shop then I’d stay focused and just get on with it - but there again, maybe I wouldn’t…

Out and about over the Easter weekend and it was amazing how many people park in spaces set aside for disabled people - even though they have no blue badge, and no disability.
Who do these people think they are?  More important than the rest of us - or maybe they know themselves to be so lazy that their only option is to put themselves first?
It’s all sorts of people - you can’t just blame it on the young - or the old.
I suppose the difficulty is that it’s hard to challenge it - people can be so aggressive these days.  So what are we to do?

There’s a real shop in Manchester.  The people behind the counter know what they are talking about.  They are pleasant and friendly - they are well mannered.  They don’t chew gum!!
It’s a shop for photographers - they sell cameras and accessories - secondhand, film cameras - not digital.
I’ve been in a couple of times now and it’s always been the same.  It’s one of those Aladdin’s Cave type of shops - your eyes just don’t know which way to look there is so much to see.
In fact, it’s so different from the other shops - especially the supermarkets - that I visit, that I wonder if it’s not real at all - just a dream.  But no, it’s there alright - 7 Dale Street, M1 1JA.

This is something that really annoys me.  I just get used to where everything is, and then they move it!
They do it on purpose of course.  A manufacturer pays them or offers them a special deal if they’ll put their product at eye-level or in a more prominent place.
Or they do it so that I’ll be forced to go down aisles I don’t want to, to see new products that I’ve never seen before.  I don’t want them and I don’t need them - but they’re intent on thrusting them in front of me.
That’s why I prefer a smaller supermarket.  The space restriction means that it’s harder for things to be continually re-arranged.  I also like to be able to see the walls in a supermarket.  Some of these mega-stores are now so big that you can’t see the end of them!  I fear that I may never find my way out.
It seems that the argument about size is one about choice and convenience - but that’s a rant I’ll save for another day.

Just think about it for a minute.
You walk for miles, pushing a trolley basket larger than yourself.  You fill it with items that you don’t necessarily need.  People look grim, babies cry, children whine.
At the end of it, you hand over wads of money and you feel exhausted.
Then there’s the long walk through the car park - dodging the drivers trying to knock you down.  You empty the contents of your trolley into the car - and then find it’s a long walk back to return your empty trolley.
We are slaves to the aliens.  They are sucking the life and the money out of us.
And we want to do this 24 hours a day?

It’s amazing really - the amount of people that come and go at a supermarket.  I’m full of a cold, so I’m sitting in the car in the car park whilst the others do the shopping.
There’s such a constant stream of cars, in and out, in and out, non stop.  In the last 40 minutes, there have been six different cars in the spaces next to me.  So these people have just popped in for a couple of items.  Makes you think - was their journey really necessary?
I’m as guilty as the rest of them.  I’ll jump in my car at the drop of a hat and be off to the supermarket - even if it’s just for a pint of milk.  I’ve heard it said that most car journeys in this country are less than two miles in distance.  Sitting here and watching people, I can well believe it.
On a different tack - when I was a kid the supermarket wasn’t open late, or on a Sunday, or on a Monday.  Mondays were the days when the shelves were restocked after Saturday.  Even with these ‘limited’ opening hours, we never seemed to run short of food.  And for the odd item we would nip to the Bob Shop across the road.  So why do we need to spend so much time at the supermarket nowadays?  It’s not like it’s less busy because it’s open longer.

She was tired this week.  She looked as if her arms ached as she reached for each item and dragged it across the scanning gizmo.  No smile, or when she tried it didn’t reach her eyes.  I thought I saw the thought, “There must be more to life than this,” flit through her mind.
I asked her when she finished - “Half seven, another hour and a half.”
Not too long to go I said.
“Yes, but my daughter’s home from Uni and she’s going out at half seven.  I’ll miss her…..”

In my local supermarket, a bottle of own brand lemonade has been 27p for the past year.  When I went to stock up for Christmas - just a few days before the great day, I discovered that it was now 42p - a rise of 15p or 55%!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Was there a great shortage - had there been a run on lemonade all over the nation.  Well it didn’t appear so, stocks seemed to be just as plentiful as ever.
So it got me thinking that it was just a great big Christmas supermarket rip-off.  They’d seen me coming and in future I’d have to buy ahead.
Well, I’ve been waiting for it to come down in price and it hasn’t.  So what’s going on here.  I’ve looked at the price of lemons and that hasn’t changed, neither has the price of plain water.  So clearly the price is not in any way related to the cost of the materials.  It seems to me that it’s a made up price - charge what you can get away with, charge what people will pay.
I’m not sure how I feel about that.

It was Christmas Day and I’d just sat down to some mindless TV having scoffed loads of food.  And there I was transported back to my childhood - all those adverts for summer holidays on the screen - I remember them well. But then there was something new - a bank announcing a sale, and then another, and another.  Banks and sales - I thought, “There’s something funny going on here.” And when you think about it, it really is quite bizzare - how can money be cheap, how can it be worth any less than what it intrinsically is?  Of course the answer is that it isn’t, it’s just that when we don’t have any, the banks lend it to us for more than it’s worth.  So is a sale just the time when they rip us off slightly less than they did before? And you might say well it’s not a rip off because it’s their money and we should pay for the service.  But this is where it all gets dodgy, because it’s not all their money - banks are allowed to lend more than they have - it’s called leverage.  So they lend you something that they haven’t got and charge you for it. Sounds like the Emperors New Clothes to me.