Yesterday I went to Aldi with my mother. I hadn’t been to an Aldi since I was eleven and still harboured a love for their breakfast cereal and ice tea. To be honest, I still love all the shit they sell. There is nothing like a Leo bar that goes by the name of Olé and thus saving you as much as Tadjikistan’s GNP of the last century. You can get two pounds of potato croquettes for 50p there for Pete’s sake, that is cheap even by Zimbabwean inflation – which, by the way, is over 250 million percent; it is even estimated at eight quintillion by a man named John Robertson. That is 8 000 000 000 000 000 000. Damn.
Anyway, mum wanted to get a product that was on offer, and consequently, that product wasn’t there. They had most likely made it so cheap it went into negative price, so you would get money for taking it home with you. Queue up society’s Harpagons and Rab C. Nesbitts. So we are standing there, in the middle of an extremely busy Aldi, when we spot a shoddy pile of cardboard boxes. “Ugh. How very Aldi.” All you see is a yellow tile floor bathed in a sickly brown fluorescent light, littered with shit Aldi sells. Shit that is arranged into artful piles according to the main ingredient: sugar, milk or alcohol. Your gaze roams over the boxes and you wonder if this is what hobo heaven looks like. Probably not, as the boxes are filled. A main requisite in the elyseum of homelessness would be that they are empty. If the boxes are full, were would hobos sleep? A full-box afterlife would probably be hobo hell.
Probably the only Aldi with shelving.
But hark! What does my roaming eye spy? Wine! There are litres and litres of a certain very good Italian wine on sale. Wine that would cost you well over twenty-five quid at Oddbins. We go straight for the wine, pick up a bottle and head for the check-out. A route that takes us past the bargain bin, and what do we find there? Matches! A hundred for 10p! *Swipe* goes mum. Now we are close to the check-out, and to the flower stand. God, is there anything more pathetic and forlorn than supermarket flowers? Apart from having bought them for cheering yourself up while spending your Christmas with a Bernard Matthews meal and a christmas cake for one? No. Ok, maybe Gordon Brown on a down day. He just looks so sad, like a big St. Bernard behind a fogged-up, slobbered-over car window.
But back to the flowers. Mum decided to buy a bouquet. Now we had a shopping trolley that contained: one bottle of wine, a box of matches and red roses. Just conjure up that mental image for a minute. It is terribly heartwrenching.
When we left and I got the purchases out of the trolley, I felt like I was a bloke that had just shopped in preparation of a cheap date. Nothing like “I am only really hoping to get laid, you can forget expensive gifts, so have these slightly wilted supermarket flowers and a bottle of wine. No, it’s not from Waitrose. And oh, some matches. It was an afterthought. What do you mean, chocolates? That’s hardly original. I am original. Now, couch or bed?” It was a bit like that time I went to the supermarket for a courgette and a bottle of vodka at 4pm.
So I was standing there in the dim glow of a streetlight, waiting for mum to bring around the car, clutching that bottle of wine, and I felt a bit like Ricky Gervais as David Brent at the Office’s christmas party. So very sad. Later I watched Dara O’Briain: Live at the Apollo and the world was alright again. But now I know that if I were a man without hope, I would probably shop at Aldi.
