Sex & Shopping

I’ve discovered that I’m a bit of a tart, when it comes to supermarkets. I know some people return, time and again, to the same, familiar shop to buy their weekly groceries. I always left the shopping to Mrs Blunt but have, since our divorce, had to learn the art of foraging for food amongst the aisles.

I won’t pretend it came naturally to me. My first attempt at buying fresh fruit came unstuck when I realised I hadn’t the faintest notion of what constituted a kilogram. Two kilos of nectarines sounds like a reasonable enough proposition, until you discover that’s about twenty of the little blighters – far more than any sane man would want to consume in a week. But mostly, I’ve taken to the grocery shop like a duck to water.

I find that I am as at ease in Morrison’s as I am in Sainsbury’s, as relaxed in Aldi as I am in Asda. I can get quite chipper at the thought of popping in to squeeze melons in my local Iceland. No one could accuse me of monogamy in my dealings with the major food retailers. I like to ‘put myself about a bit’, and have even been spotted in Netto, now and again.

Yet there’s one place that always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps it’s all that pseudo-patriotic red, white and blue … but I’ve never yet been seduced by Tesco. They just don’t do it for me. I know that the retail analysts will tell us that one pound in every eight spent in the UK finds its way into the hands of the Tesco family, but they’d be lucky if they got a tenner a year from me. They’re obviously doing something right as they steamroller their new shops across the country. A lot of folk clearly like what they do. Not Bill Blunt, though. The remorseless Tesco-fication of Britain leaves me cold. Their pioneering ‘out of town’ supermarkets almost spelled the death knell of Britain’s corner shop. What few are left will easily be seen off by the Tesco Metro’s that are springing up everywhere. Every time I hear that phrase ‘Every little helps’, I can’t help feeling just a little queasy.

Though I have forsworn setting foot in Tesco, there are still (thankfully) plenty of other retail giants offering the opportunity to saunter down the dairy aisle, coyly smiling at the rather attractive female choosing which brand of low-fat cottage cheese to buy, while I ruminate over yoghurts. Supermarkets are now the place of choice for the single, unattached male bent on picking up women, it seems. They perform the same social function as the dance hall or the coffee bar once did, in my youth. And a glance in the basket of any woman will give you an instant appraisal of the type of person she is.

My top tip, for any man who finds himself checking out ladies at the check-outs, is to look for a well-balanced basket. Plenty of fresh fruit, veg and all that stuff. A bottle of red wine, perhaps. Fight shy of the bottle of gin types: you can’t know for sure it’s not a daily habit.