Take a trip to Tesco to paper over the cracks in your marriage – Steve Canavan

There is something profoundly depressing about going to a supermarket. As I’m wandering around the aisles, gazing at a display of J-cloths and disinfectant, a heavy wave of depression comes over me and I can’t help but feel that maybe there’s more to life than looking for the best offers on antibacterial toilet seat wipes.
How much? Steve was forced to go and help with the family shoppingHow much? Steve was forced to go and help with the family shopping
How much? Steve was forced to go and help with the family shopping

Supermarkets are invariably crowded; the music they pipe over the tannoys is always something by one of either George Michael, Elton John or Coldplay, and – perhaps because of the previous point – people are in a bad mood and get annoyed if you so much as accidentally place your trolley at a slightly inconvenient angle and unintentionally block their way to the yoghurt four-pack of their choice.

However, I am forced to go to these soulless, miserable places most weekends in an effort to keep my marriage intact.

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I have, you see, the misfortune to be married to a woman who gets upset if we don’t spend time together.

Now look, I know it’s just been Valentine’s Day and I should be a little more romantic, but I’ve never understood this spending time together thing. My ideal day is to spend it on my own. A woman’s ideal day is to spend it with someone else.

Forget bits of our anatomy, this, I believe, is the fundamental difference between the male and female species.‘You never hug me or show affection,’ Mrs C often says forlornly.

‘I do,’ I argue back. ‘We held hands on holiday in Devon in 2009’ (which is true, though only because I’d been drinking and forgot myself).

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I once got told off for not helping or showing concern when my partner, after an evening of drinking rather heavily, bolted from the bed in the early hours of the morning and ran to the bathroom to be sick.

‘Why didn’t you check I was all right and stroke my hair?’ she later asked.

Now I like to think I’m a caring individual but I draw the line at watching someone, no matter how well I know them, vomiting into a toilet bowl. The thought of actually touching them as they did it is beyond the pale.

Anyway, back to the weekend shopping trip.

‘You promised to decorate the back bedroom two years ago and it’s still not done, so you’re coming to Tesco whether you like it or not,’ Mrs C shouted. 

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Which is actually nonsensical but after muttering and sighing and tutting for a lengthy period in the hope Mrs C would cave in and shout ‘fine I’ll go on my own’ (she didn’t), I meekly went along with her. What a demoralising experience.

At dinner-time on Saturday, we approached the store, only to find there was a traffic jam just to get in the damn car park.

‘Shall we turn back?’ I asked hopefully. ‘No’, barked Mrs C.

Once inside the store, we had to navigate aisles more gridlocked than the M25 in rush-hour. The breakfast cereal aisle was particularly congested and as I weaved my way towards the Weetabix, I accidentally ran my trolley over the toes of a very unimpressed middle-aged woman.

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I apologised, twice, but from the look on her face – and the size of her bruised, swollen toes – I’m not sure she accepted it.

It took more than an hour to complete the shop, not helped by Mrs C’s addiction to special deals.

Standard exchange: ‘Pickled onions are on offer’. Me: ‘But neither of us eat pickled onions’. Her: ‘It’s two jars for £1.50 – we’ll get them for a rainy day’.

Then the piece de resistance.

After totting up our bill and taking our hard-earned cash, the young lad on the checkout  cheerily remarked, ‘Good news,you’ve saved £11.80 by shopping at Tesco today’.

Saved? Our bill had come to £121. We’d almost had to re-mortgage the house to pay for it.

This Saturday I’m feigning illness.