Every Little Helps
By Clare Bagnall
Monday 19th October 2009
Monday 19th October 2009
We live in an age of awakened spirituality and awareness. The best place locally to test your inner peace and Zen-like qualities is, of course, St Andrews’ Tesco, between the hours of one and five. At no other time and in no other place will your patience and endurance and good-humour be quite so stretched to their limits. During the year, especially during times of great academic pressure, you will be made to realise the incredible highs and lows of human stupidity. You will be made to stand like cattle, mindlessly herded around the people who are still actually trying to do their shopping. There will be times when you just want to hurl your eggs and bread on the floor and storm out. But then you would go hungry, and Tesco would just be irritating you and defeating you again in yet another way. Come 10.30pm you would have to go crawling back and, true, there would be hardly anyone there, but there would be hardly any food either…
The problem is this: people must eat to survive. To eat one must first purchase food. And where else is there, apart from Morrisons (which is practically in England) but Tesco? Nowhere. This in itself, perhaps, would not necessarily be a problem, if it weren’t for the vast crowds of people who wish to eat. St Andrews is a fairly small town, with a relatively large student population, and then there are also the people who have the misfortune to live here. Let’s not forget, as well, that on top of this there are also those enormously irritating Madras children who insist on blocking pavements, cheap eateries, and tills come lunchtime. As a student — as an egotistical, entirely-superior-to-the-foolish-foolish-people-getting-in-my-way student — one cannot help but think that you shouldn’t have to spend more time queuing for your food than it will actually take you to cook it.
Now, we have all been there. That awful moment, at the end of an equally horrendous day - all you really want is a giant bar of fabulously cheap chocolate, and a nice half-price bottle of wine to wash it down. It really isn’t too much to ask for at all. You stumble out of your tutorial, or out of the library laden with books you really don’t have the time or inclination to read. You are convinced you are going to fail your degree, fall into a weeping heap in the middle of Market Street, or are going to spend the rest of your life miserable and alone because St Andrews has made you a bitter, socially backward person. Possibly all three. So, all you really want is that glass of wine, that chunk of chocolate. You take a deep breath, because although you can delude yourself, you know the reality of what is coming. Tesco will lie before you, a heaving, brawling, boiling, seething, shuddering nightmare. You could turn and run, but that would mean you don’t get the wine and chocolate. So you battle through. There’s none of the cheap chocolate, but you manage to get the last bottle of good half-price wine. A small victory; chances are it’s corked. The wine is shelved at the rear of the store, but thankfully you only have to take a couple of paces forward and you are at the back of a queue. And so the waiting begins. You may as well just bring a corkscrew and glass and hand the person on the till an empty bottle.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that however busy the supermarket is, the tills will never, ever all be open. As such, the customer has to wait. And wait. Zen-like, meditating, inhaling deeply. Eventually you will get served, but not until there is some huge palaver because the seemingly un-savvy shopper in front of you has somehow, managed to pick up the only Nutella jar in the whole world that is being sold without any label on at all. That said, maybe they have just picked it off in boredom while waiting.
Not to go on, but it isn’t even as though the selection in the supermarket is great. I am not criticising Tesco in itself for this, rather the universe, in which St Andrews Tesco is allowed to exist in its current form. If you go in looking for couscous, that is not lemon flavoured, you will be disappointed. Aubergines too are sorely lacking (but thankfully there is a fruit and veg. shop for those). There have also been times when a simple lemon was unavailable. But there is the lemon-flavoured couscous if you are willing to compromise.
All students who survive their degrees alongside this daily battle deserve something to show for it. A Dean’s List of Tesco survivors perhaps? A small medal maybe? A free bottle of cheap wine with accompanying bar of chocolate as a sign of gratitude for continued custom? Maybe even just putting more people on the tills? After all; every little helps!
The problem is this: people must eat to survive. To eat one must first purchase food. And where else is there, apart from Morrisons (which is practically in England) but Tesco? Nowhere. This in itself, perhaps, would not necessarily be a problem, if it weren’t for the vast crowds of people who wish to eat. St Andrews is a fairly small town, with a relatively large student population, and then there are also the people who have the misfortune to live here. Let’s not forget, as well, that on top of this there are also those enormously irritating Madras children who insist on blocking pavements, cheap eateries, and tills come lunchtime. As a student — as an egotistical, entirely-superior-to-the-foolish-foolish-people-getting-in-my-way student — one cannot help but think that you shouldn’t have to spend more time queuing for your food than it will actually take you to cook it.
Now, we have all been there. That awful moment, at the end of an equally horrendous day - all you really want is a giant bar of fabulously cheap chocolate, and a nice half-price bottle of wine to wash it down. It really isn’t too much to ask for at all. You stumble out of your tutorial, or out of the library laden with books you really don’t have the time or inclination to read. You are convinced you are going to fail your degree, fall into a weeping heap in the middle of Market Street, or are going to spend the rest of your life miserable and alone because St Andrews has made you a bitter, socially backward person. Possibly all three. So, all you really want is that glass of wine, that chunk of chocolate. You take a deep breath, because although you can delude yourself, you know the reality of what is coming. Tesco will lie before you, a heaving, brawling, boiling, seething, shuddering nightmare. You could turn and run, but that would mean you don’t get the wine and chocolate. So you battle through. There’s none of the cheap chocolate, but you manage to get the last bottle of good half-price wine. A small victory; chances are it’s corked. The wine is shelved at the rear of the store, but thankfully you only have to take a couple of paces forward and you are at the back of a queue. And so the waiting begins. You may as well just bring a corkscrew and glass and hand the person on the till an empty bottle.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that however busy the supermarket is, the tills will never, ever all be open. As such, the customer has to wait. And wait. Zen-like, meditating, inhaling deeply. Eventually you will get served, but not until there is some huge palaver because the seemingly un-savvy shopper in front of you has somehow, managed to pick up the only Nutella jar in the whole world that is being sold without any label on at all. That said, maybe they have just picked it off in boredom while waiting.
Not to go on, but it isn’t even as though the selection in the supermarket is great. I am not criticising Tesco in itself for this, rather the universe, in which St Andrews Tesco is allowed to exist in its current form. If you go in looking for couscous, that is not lemon flavoured, you will be disappointed. Aubergines too are sorely lacking (but thankfully there is a fruit and veg. shop for those). There have also been times when a simple lemon was unavailable. But there is the lemon-flavoured couscous if you are willing to compromise.
All students who survive their degrees alongside this daily battle deserve something to show for it. A Dean’s List of Tesco survivors perhaps? A small medal maybe? A free bottle of cheap wine with accompanying bar of chocolate as a sign of gratitude for continued custom? Maybe even just putting more people on the tills? After all; every little helps!