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HOW WE SHOP NOW

(I don't always get it right)

One day in April I made what, by then, amounted to an epic schoolboy error!  I forgot something vital, important and necessary, while shopping, and needed to go back the following day.  Of course, the following day in question was the day before a national public holiday.  I queued accordingly.  At our local Tesco you now enter by the one true entrance; you leave by the one true exit.  Sometimes, they swap the two around, just to catch you out.  It can seem dystopian but, in truth, it's just systems of humans trying to work stuff out.  

If there's a long queue, you either walk away or you queue.  I've walked more often than I've queued.  I don't drive, so shopping is more frequent and more about keeping on top of things. On that day pictured above, the choice to walk was absent.  Once in the supermarket, sometimes it is quite pleasant; sometimes it can be like shopping in Gilead. Marthas and Handmaids alike love a tin of reassuringly expensive Stella Artois, it seems.


Most shoppers are sensible, enter with a mission and, for the most part, are able to walk in the same direction as the arrows on the floor.  Others have forgotten it is in point of fact 2020.  It is not unusual to stand the mandated two meters metres apart from someone while they make their minds up or phone home for a discussion about which crumpets to buy.

Eventually, this being moral panic stricken Britain, I think there will be linger shaming and arrow shaming, revealing new fault-lines in society for our politicians to exploit.

© 2020 Jason Hindle

The photos?  The top one was taken with my Google Pixel 3a XL.  The other was taken with my iPhone 7.  I have a Photoshop Action to add borders, text and so on. They do the job but I'd have preferred to have had the Ricoh GR with me.  The staff are quite sensitive about photography and have shouted at people for taking selfies while queuing/shopping.  So photos tend to be pretty clandestine - perhaps phones are best for this.



 
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