Super heroes and silent shopping? – by Brandon Faber
Posted on 26. Nov, 2009 by admin in Brandon Faber
Apparently making a roast chicken for dinner involves food fighting with Jamie Oliver’s under 13 cooking graduates and a team of hungry Romanian rugby players.
Lord knows only a bunch of pre-teen hooligans and sportsmen with little ball sense (but lots of brawn) can cause the chaos, damage and disaster as presented in the latest Pre-Mr. Muscle kitchen. Sure they pretend that it’s just a mom and some attention deficit disorderly offspring that prepared the meal (with their feet and Caterpillar industrial earth moving equipment) but we all know the truth.
A mere minute before the man in orange arrived, package protruding as he sorted out the mayhem with one foul swoop, Anatoli Dimitru showed the kind of individual brilliance that’s made him the Romanian player of the year . . .thrice.
Sidestepping a stray leaf of iceberg lettuce and a tin of canned tomatoes, our hero ripped the roast chicken from the oven before sprinting down the right-hand “touchline” for a last gasp try in the corner, next to the basin under which all inferior cleaning products are kept.
Anatoli was then carried outside on the shoulders of his comrades while the under 13’s immediately retreated to the safety of the living room to twitter about their humiliation – and the futile nature of cooking anything at home anymore. . .
And, by the looks of the queues at Woolworths Food stores, they may have a point.
Every night the same crowd. Some doing actual grocery shopping but, most, just looking for something half-decent to eat. Hell, anything will do and, we’ll convince ourselves, we are actually really getting good value for money. Of course R28 for 10 grapes is a bit steep, but, “they are from Spain, you know”.
Alas I digress – but humour me for just another minute if you will.
Could someone from Woolworths head office please explain to this pale male why I never hear any music in any of your stores? Are we supposed to shop in silence for eternity? Will some normal background entertainment upset the fragile state of the orchids? Will a bit of radio adversely affect the freshness of the veggies, or sour mentioned grapes a day early?
For Pete’s sake man. I am going to spend R500 on two small bags of goodies and a plant I don’t have space for, the least you can do is make it a semi-pleasant experience.
Nah, this library-esque atmosphere does nothing to unleash the compulsive shopper in me.
If I wanted to be silenced to death I’d attend poetry readings and “performance art” exhibitions in liberal parts of Cape Town – or – become a political activist in my choice of oppressive regime.
This here is just shopping, let’s not pretend it’s a serene and beautiful thing.
And let’s not pretend that we need to have grime-smeared walls and donkey hoof-prints on the kitchen ceiling in order to get the Mr. Muscle message across, please. A simple “clean your kitchen you dirty fools” will suffice. Most of us “get it”.
But then again what do I know? I buy my chicken at Woolworths . . .
“What’s that you say lady?”, “Next customer please?”
Sing Hallelujah!
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