Cut-price foods make me happy

Christmas has now come and gone, hopefully fulfilling its promise as a time of goodwill to all people. According to A Christmas Carol, it is a time when rich people should have been kind and generous to the poor as, statistically at least; many of them are people too!

But social contact and friendly manner is, like, so pre-internet. Luckily we have The Christmas Sales™ (TCS) instead to act as a once-yearly border crossing between the tiers of society, without the need for anything as embarrassing as talking with posh folk or as potentially disease-catching as mixing with the poor. Boxing day is for (wo)men of all colours, creed and class to queue up as equals; equally desperate for deals and, suddenly, equally able to afford them.

Indeed, if A Christmas Carol was set nowadays Tiny Tim would never have the chance to die from hunger and sickliness. He’d die from being an over-fed fatso gagging on all the cut-price mince pies selling like hot-cakes (also on offer) in Sainsbury’s after chrimbo. He probably wouldn’t even be called ‘Tiny’ as there’s only so much irony allowed on tombstones. But he’d die happy, gorging on the finest Taste the Difference pies and loving every morsel of difference he tasted.

Oh Truck-like Tim how I can relate to thee! Are there any greater joys of a modern existence than stumbling across top deals in the Reduced Price food section of a supermarket? And unlike the short-lived high of TCS™, it is a pleasure that remains throughout the year: Cheap offers are for life, not just for Christmas.

But some people are blind to the power of those small yellow labels, taking just a cursory look at what is on offer and, worse; only looking out for the random freak occurrence that something on their usual shopping list has been reduced. This is the grocery equivalent of being offered cut-price flights to Fiji, but leaving them because they aren’t ‘Costa Del Sol like you’re used to’.

Instead, one should appreciate that humble reduction-sticker-gun for what it really is, a hole-punch for social groups, creating little portals through which drop reduced-price consumables from entirely different lives. I would never have tried Irish Soda Bread if I had not seen it stickered in a Sainsbury’s aisle, nor Potato Farls if I hadn’t spied them cheap in Tesco. I’d never have ponced about like some chocolate aficionado whilst munching on my Gü torte, nor would I have been sorely disappointed by those trendy Covent Garden soups that had always tempted me with their homely, wholesome packaging. Bizarre bakery blooms, gluten-free peanut squares or soya milk chocolate milkshakes, all have been little tastes of other price-ranges, lands or incurable chronic bowel conditions. Each one allows me a little bit of role play, whether stepping into the shoes of a Ryvita–buying yummy mummy or the (frankly tasteless) microwave crab ready meal of some time-pressed urban yuppie. Each one has been a culinary education and often, a pleasant surprise.

Do not be disheartened this year if you don’t get that jacket you wanted in the TCS™. All year round we are blessed by big corporations and a Santa’s sack load of gifts and goodies for us little people.

Thank you Tesco.