Duck Duck Goose

I don't really do grocery shopping these days. Modern times and the ceaseless advances of technology have eliminated my need to walk to the shops once a week, trudging up and down the aisles with my trolley, then lumbering home with armfuls of shopping bags weighing me down. I never was much good at shopping anyway, but the moment the world advanced enough for the supermarkets to say "Why don't you just tell our website what you want, and we'll bring it to you?", my shopping life changed forever.

Problem is, of course, it doesn't always work. For the past few weeks I've been trying to obtain my regular brand of easy-to-prepare frozen turkey. But, unusually, the nice people at Tesco have not had any. This is most upsetting. Their last chance was on Thursday, with my final "big delivery" before Christmas, and again... they didn't have any. Sensing the potential for Christmas-ruining error, I did take the precaution of ordering some Chicken as well. Which arrived with the health-saving warning "USE BY DECEMBER 24TH" on it. Now I'm sure that I can scoff at this date but not everyone agrees and I'd probably only get shouted at if I tried.

So, a victim of circumstance and perhaps my own inflexibility, I find myself just two days away from Christmas, staring down the barrel of not having any meat for din dins. It was, therefore, with some reluctance that I knew I would have to trudge down to an actual supermarket this morning to see if anything was available.

Despite shopping for meat, I found that somehow, lots and lots of chocolate products had already made their way into my shopping basket before I was anywhere near the frozen food section. But having arrived at the freezers, what did I see but... well.. really, not very much turkey at all. And specifically, none of Bernard Matthews' interesting circular-shaped frozen turkeys which I quite like, on account of them being very easy to cook and very hard to muck up.

In fact, the only circular turkeys I could find were not the luscious and sumptuous breast, but the less luscious and not as sumptuous "leg", whatever that is. I consider myself a breast man, so the leg is uncharted territory. Still, I am sure that it is quite alright, so I bought two, just in case.

It wasn't actually the shopping that took the time - oh no, what took the time was queuing up to actually pay for my little basket of items. Queues all over the place - six different queues (one per checkout) snaking all over and around the store. I joined one and waited about.. hm, what, half an hour?, before I finally paid and got out of there. The local boy scouts and girl guides were in attendance on each checkout, helping to pack people's shopping - which was awfully nice but as half an hour of queueing had proved, it wasn't speeding things up any.

Listening to the radio this evening, it seems that my local shop is not alone in having entirely sold out of turkey. Apparently this phenomena is occuring all over the country, and many Christmas shoppers are having to consider alternative birds - including duck, and even goose. I am sure both of them are nice, but in the true spirit of being as fussy as a four-year-old, I have had neither of them before, so therefore I obviously do not like them, thankyou very much.

Elsewhere in the Bernard Matthews stable, I'm not completely appalled by those circular frozen lambs which he manages to breed somehow. Sadly those too seemed to have sold out. I blame all those other people, crazily buying out entire stores worth of stock, as if Christmas meant that the shops would be closed for two weeks rather than two days.

While queueing I had a brief conversation with the lady queueing behind me. She was of the opinion that such delay was really not the done thing. I suggested that despite the often-quoted British prediliction for forming queues, it really wasn't something that we seemed to do very well.

On the plus side, my expedition to the shops did reveal that there are a few more fish and chip places down my street, and it's only the closest one to me which is closed until January. I was almost tempted to pick some up on my way home, but it was far too cold and after having had my super-hero energy sapped by such incessant queueing, I really just wanted to get back home.

So, Christmas is... well, around a day and a half away now, and all is safely gathered in. I have sprouts, and stuffing, and lots of pizzas (that's what happens when I go shopping on an empty stomach), as well as my slightly-less-excellent-but-still-turkey turkey. All that's left to do is to get on with enjoying the festive season. I think I'm starting to quite look forward to it now!