Things used to cost approximately what you expected them to cost. Now, the price of almost every item is eye-wateringly, gasp-inducingly more than you expect it to be. The nation is reeling from a month of crippling generosity.
The new cashless existence anaesthetised us a little from the financial violence as we went through Advent visiting actual shops, discovering that almost no item cost less than £50, and trying not to feel physical pain or to look at the numbers on the screen as we heard the transactional beep. Now, in January’s glare, bank statements are regurgitating our crazy Decembers. Mine started with £33 for 20 first-class stamps and went on to include multiple shocks, such as £60 for three bars of Floris soap, £117 for a small bottle of Jo Malone scent and £70 for the ordered-in-advance turkey (size: small).
Is anything still cheap? ‘We can live happily on mushrooms,’ says my husband, coming home from Tesco with two £1 packs of closed-cup white ones for the evening pasta dish made with dried penne, frozen peas, leftover bacon and cream. Those are, in fact, the ingredients for frugal luxury.
This is the month in which the dazed middle classes discover the parallel universe further down the high street, the no-frills, cashierless world of Lidl, where a box of mushrooms costs 89p, a mega-bucket of Greek yoghurt £1.65 and a packet of spaghetti 28p. Price-wise, it’s like travelling back to the 1980s. Hundreds of items cost well under £1, including chopped tomatoes for 39p. The labels are unsettlingly obscure – Naturis juice, Tower Gate biscuits, Baresa plum tomatoes, Fin Carré chocolate.
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