Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

Real life | 15 September 2016

Something amazing happened: the checkout girl decided to honour the meal deal

issue 17 September 2016

‘This is the last straw. Never again,’ I thought, as I sat in the carpark of a Little Waitrose eating a chicken mayonnaise salad with my bare hands.

I always say this and I always come back for more. I tell myself I can handle it. If only I shop differently it won’t hurt. I’ll buy own brand. I’ll resist the three for twos. I’ll make it work. I have to. I love it. I can’t live without it. I have to find a way…

No, no. I must leave. I cannot go on like this. And I pull myself together. But after a few weeks’ shopping in some sensible alternative with its reliably good produce and predictable, dull prices, I am drawn back. I feel the lure of the gleaming white and green surfaces, the cool lights, the promise of upper middle class respectability ever hanging in the air…

‘Oh, I do love you!’ I think, as I wander the aisles putting tiny packets of the cheapest things I can find into my basket.

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