The Coronavid Diaries Part 2 - Heroes of Shopping

There’s a big supermarket where I live that is the size of an aircraft carrier. All the big supermarkets docked in Streatham sooner or later.  Some closed, some opened, but some were always here. Always there was bounty if you had the cash.

In ordinary times my strategy had been switch off, get in, get out. I hated that hurly burly, begrudged every minute that I was there, went through the shopping zombies like a man in a dream.

The first weekend after lockdown the shelves aren’t completely bare. Not completely. No toilet paper obviously, no eggs, no tinned tomatoes. No tinned preserves of almost any description. No pasta, no rice, no beans, no hand soap, no disinfectant, no paracetamol. There is very little bread.

Edna is a lady in her fifties I would guess. She’s gazing at the mackerel, of which some tins remain. She’s stunned.

“It isn’t normal” she says. She’s bang on. It is eerie to see shelf after shelf lying empty. It’s a wake-up call.

A wary courtesy is emerging among most of the shoppers who try to stay away from each other as best they can. Better to be slow and cautious. There are little nods and chin pokes that say after you. Most wait patiently until the person in front has moved on, even the person who spends minutes gazing into a list on his mobile phone. We don’t speak much. We’re English after all.

Some bunch up and race by you with their baskets just as before, desperate to get out as soon as they can. My hackles rise. But then again, maybe it makes sense to spend as little time as possible here.

I buy one can of corn of two that are left. I buy a tin of soup which I would never buy, but carrot and coriander is an investment now.

Yet I meet Andrew who looks at my shopping cart and tells me I have too much stuff. He tells me he’s been there every day trying to buy toilet paper. I look at my trolley. I have at least 9 tins. Is this too much?

When I got home we lined our booty up. There did not seem to be much there. Yet after a few days we found that the coronavirus fairy had left three half empty packet of pasta, some lentils, some flour. Later still the fairy had removed a packet of coffee. The coronavirus fairy is capricious.

The second weekend it wasn’t so bad. We lined up outside the store six feet from each other. The sun was blazing and beyond us the common was green and empty.

Jeremy's hands are filthy, his eyes are desperate. He sails in and out, clearly homeless. The government promised to get all the rough sleepers off the street this week-end. We mostly look past him.

Then you start to wonder.  When do you get your shopping cart?  Will you lose your place in line? A young man watching his phone lets me back in without acknowledging my presence.  It was one in one out when you got to the front. A member of the supermarket staff pushes an old guy up the line, trailing an empty handbasket. No-one quarrels with that. Yet the shoppers coming out have nowhere to go but right past you a foot away.

Still there was no toilet paper, no pasta, no rice, no flour, but the shelves were being topped up again overnight. Ahead of me a family were distressed because they couldn’t buy any beans for their rice and peas dinner. I found 2 tins of tomatoes. A packet of crackers. When we got to the eggs there were 3 packets of organic duck eggs left. Who buys duck eggs? I do it seems.

When I got to the check-out a terrified young woman tells me I can’t have my tomatoes because they should be part of a package. She has no physical protection from infections and she is telling me the store might lose 49 p as there is no bar code.  This doesn’t seem right.

The third week the supermarket had it down. Black and yellow tapes on the floor tell everyone what two metres is. One way arrows are everywhere. Barriers have been built to stop anyone from doubling back. To be honest I didn’t clock it at first, and the message on the loudspeaker crackled, but when the penny dropped I became  a right martinet.

“Sorry Madam” says I as a mum with plastic gloves goes the wrong way up the aisle. She nods and thanks me, and later I see her telling someone else. I score some aubergines. “Hey mate one way” I say to a guy trailing his girlfriend in the greengrocer shelves. He shrugs at me.

Another guy is going the wrong way to look at the cornflakes. He spends a good three minutes phoning his wife to ask how much money he should spend on cereal. We wait forever. He has almost nothing in his handbasket.

Then when I get to check-out the workers finally have plastic screens and gloves. The woman serving me is in her fifties. She looks frightened but she’s doing her job. She is determined. I imagine that she has children and grandchildren that she has to support.  

As I get the groceries into the bags I tear up. “I think you are all heroes” I say. She looks surprised. We are both embarrassed as only the English can be.

“Bless” she says.