Carrots or Avocados

[walpurgis]

No, the world ceased to be normal around about 1979 and it's been getting steadily worse ever since. You're older than me you should have noticed it happen.

Well The Buggles were in the charts in 1979. Not certain that was 'normal' !

[Marco]

The way I see it the more people who thieve from the self checkout, the quicker the supermarkets will abandon them and go back to proper tills.

Or even better the supermarkets go broke and we can go back to walking down the high street and calling in at the baker, grocer, greengrocer, butcher like we used to do when the world was still normal.

Hear, hear!

And get far better produce, to boot.

Marco.

[Macca]

Marco knows what I'm talking about.

Supermarkets have destroyed the character of our towns, fragmented the social structure and made essential shopping a weird and de-personalized experience. They are extremely unpleasant places to be in for any length of time, pretty much every aspect of their design is hostile to our senses. Having to do your own checkout is just a new low in an experience that was already rock-bottom.


The only advantage is that food is a little bit cheaper. Was it really worth all we sacrificed to save five pee on a bag of potatoes?


And while I'm on the subject what about all the plastic packaging they generate? In the old days you got a paper bag with your tomatoes in it, not a mass of plastic wrapped round them. You chucked the bag on the fire when you were done, or used it to keep spare screws in it or something. No plastic carrier bags.


Milk, beer and pop all came in re-usable bottles, milk was delivered by a zero-emission vehicle, there was no need to have 5 different dustbins and Christmas didn't start until December.


And yet now we are supposed to be going green? After we got rid of all the green stuff and replaced it with not green at all stuff? I mean, who is kidding who?

[Joe]

In a way, we've gone full circle with grocery shopping. When I was a nipper, most of our weekly food supply was delivered to our door by the Co-op. There were also bread, fruit, and meat delivery vans doing the rounds. Nowadays, a lot of people have gone back to home delivery.

[Macca]

We used to have 'Tom the Greengrocer' who had a big van with one side open. He'd just park at the kerb and beep his horn and people would flock out to buy fruit and veg.


He had a proper shop too, it didn't have a sign so everyone just called it 'Tom's shop'. Then when the son took over he put up a sign saying 'Tom's Shop' which ruined it a bit.

[Len Co]

Digressing slightly, my uncle opened a corner grocer's shop way back in about 1960. Everything was 'on tick' and he kept a record of orders in his little black book hoping to get paid at the end of the week (month, year... Who knows, it was a pretty poor area in a South Wales mining community). Eventually of course there was a break in, no cash to nick but they didn't want that, they wanted his little black book. He then had to rely on people's honesty in remembering what they'd had. Suddenly everyone had gone off ham, corned beef, cheese, chocolates, fags... All some could remember having bought was carrots and spuds. That was the end of his business.

[Joe]

We used to have 'Tom the Greengrocer' who had a big van with one side open. He'd just park at the kerb and beep his horn and people would flock out to buy fruit and veg.


He had a proper shop too, it didn't have a sign so everyone just called it 'Tom's shop'. Then when the son took over he put up a sign saying 'Tom's Shop' which ruined it a bit.

We actually had two bread delivery men, known as 'the thick man' and 'the thin man'. The butcher who did deliveries was very rude and swore a lot. He had a young assistant whom he only ever referred to as 'gobshite'.

[walpurgis]

In the fifties, our baker and milkman had horsedrawn 'carts'. The milkman was a smashing friendly bloke that everybody thought the world of. He didn't like it when he was given an electric float. That was around 1960.

[Macca]

We actually had two bread delivery men, known as 'the thick man' and 'the thin man'. The butcher who did deliveries was very rude and swore a lot. He had young assistant whom he only ever referred to as 'gobshite'.

Did you have an 'insurance man' who would call once a month? And someone who came round to collect your Pools coupon? And the pop van come to collect your pop bottles. Window cleaner coming round for his money … must be some more I can't remember.

When I think about it we must have been answering the door all the time.

[struth]

used to have a lot o vans... all coop obviously... butchers, greengrocer, baker, milk, plus a pools guy... mum washed her own windows.