Are there more people killed in Asda supermarkets than anywhere else - and if not, why not?
Let me begin by saying that I accept any blame that might be handed out over the whole experience because I did a very stupid thing. I went shopping with my wife (on a Sunday!) to the Asda supermarket at Clapham Junction. Now I know that with this simple admission I risk losing about half of my readers. (He did what? This guy is obviously an idiot - I'm not reading any more of this.) But bear with me, we all have our moments of weakness.She asked me to go with her, what was I supposed to do? The choice between going to Asda's on a Sunday and getting the wife mad at you is not one you want to have to make too often.
When we get there the place is roaring. It is like Oxford Street during the pre - Christmas sales or the pre - New Year sales or whenever the hell it is they hold their goddamned sales. The place is huge but jam-packed with people who are, strangely, all behaving as if they are completely alone in the store. They stroll around propriatorially gazing at potential purchases, most of which they chose to acquire, because all of the trollies are pyramided with stuff by the time they get to the check-outs. They park these trollies in the middle of the aisle - sideways, of course - and take a slow meander to study the competing attractions offered by a 7ft. high wall of vegetables or to ponder whether it will be the cheaper frozen chicken today or the slightly more pricey fresh.
Okay, you live, and therefore shop, in London so you know that this is the deal. Mayhem is the natural state of affairs here so just shut up and get on with it. So we do, and eventually we get to the check-outs. All of these are working flat out and in front of every one of them is a queue of at least ten people, each one of them pushing a trolley with enough food in it to feed a family of six for a year. I stare aghast at this immobile chunk of humanity and groceries in despair,experiencing a panic-edged gloom not lessened by the knowledge that I have voluntarily inflicted this on myself.
But a gleam of hope appears in the distance. The Do-It-Yourself check-outs! Even the most combative Asda-goers baulk at these mechanisms of antique torment so the queues are shorter there. Also the wife tells me, with a bland confidence I find anything but reassuring, that a child could use them. She, by the way, is exhibiting no signs of disturbance or vexation, appearantly under the delusion that this near-phantasmagorical ordeal is actually normal human behaviour. Only, amazingly, showing a tut-tutting irritation with me as my justifiable exasperation threatens to erupt into actual violence.
We reach the check-out. There is a place to put your basket and a metal pad on which to place your 'scanned' purchases. I know this because a voice from the bowels of the check-out has just told me it. The scanning of our second item, however, doesn't work. My wife tries it again. And again. We clearly need help. A woman comes over, bleeps the machine with her gadget, and we are off again. For two more items. The next one doesn't scan. It doesn't scan several times. Well, it's not something we really need, the wife says, and she puts it on one side. She does the same with the next item, which won't scan either, and is not best pleased when I protest that I haven't lugged these damn things all around the store only to abandon them at the last minute.
By now, for our different reasons, we just want to get out of there. The remaining items are put over the glass scanner. If they work, fine, if they don't, we just sling 'em. We bolt into the chemically riddled air of the car park an pause to take several deep breaths. Even when it is poisonous, freedom is sweet. We throw our four items into the boot and we're gone.
It would not trouble me to return to Asda's at Clapham Junction, but any future visit would include certain elementary precautions. Provided you go after 10pm most days are safe but never, as Melina Mercouri so wisely said, never on a Sunday.
