HAPPY, Pharrell Williams, Davina, curry sauce and me

The song that was playing on the car radio as I arrived at the supermarket was ‘HAPPY’ by Pharrell Williams. You know the song, it makes you want to dance and sing along. I stepped out of the car and into Lidl with a spring in my step and, thanks to Pharrell Williams, feeling happy.

I bumped into a girlfriend, Davina the shopaholic, in the car park. She is my spend spend spend friend who was re-christened “GIVE ME, GET ME, I WANT” by her mother when she hit puberty. Davina insisted that we do our shopping together. This was a first for me. We walked into Lidl, two women, one trolley, exchanging gossip.  Davina is always great company.

We soon got into a rhythm. She’d push for a bit and I’d throw my stuff in, then we’d switch. My shopping list was long because after school I was feeding six children. Being Friday, pizza was the obvious choice. I can’t remember the last time that we actually made pizza but I had made the promise that morning that we’d give it a go.

If you actually bother to make a pizza from scratch, there is a ridiculous amount of ingredients. Flour, yeast, sugar for starters. Then the toppings: cheese, tomato sauce (if homemade that means tomatoes, onions, garlic etc.), ham, mushrooms, mushrooms, oregano, salami, peppers, tuna, spinach, olives and sweetcorn. The only pleasurable thing about finding every item was that I had a friend for company.

Soon my mind had gone from pizza to household chores. Davina and I fawned over the spring-cleaning products. I found a lovely laundry basket, a clothes airer, a bucket, a special pair of indestructible rubber gloves and some scented bleach. Everything went into the shared trolley.

As my cleaning clutter and groceries stacked up, Davina’s was going in too, but much faster. Like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep, she was running from aisle to aisle throwing in more and more things. Before you could say “Yes Dale” our trolley was filling up with her ‘essentials’. Davina was born to shop.

She had found a mop, a squeegee, a foot spa, a pack of three vest tops, a pair of running trousers and a rather lovely pink polka dot scarf. “OMG. LOOK” she held up a clothes drier. “IT HANGS FROM ANY DOOR IN THE HOUSE”. It too went in the trolley along with three Christmas puddings, “these NEVER go out of date,” she added. Her excitement was infectious and I don’t think that grocery shopping has ever been so much fun.

We were on a shopping high and if ever there was an advert for shopping with friends, we were it. We were even pushing the trolley along together at one point, throwing our heads back and laughing. This is what you miss out on when you shop online. My shopaholic friend went crazy when she saw the frozen section.

 “THESE ARE AMAZE-BALLS” she shouted from the freezer cabinet. Her head was in the bottom of it and her legs dangled over the edge.   She came up for air and handed me a turkey breast wrapped in bacon and stuffed with something. “These are fab too,” she said, handing me a pair of duck breasts. “They are from the LUXURY range”. They went into the trolley.

“Try these” she handed me a pack of choc-ices. “They will get rid of the January blues”. They went in on top of the pile of frozen food, toilet rolls, milk, butter, bread and the bleach. At the wine section, Davina put in one, two or maybe five bottles. I can’t remember. Our groceries were piled so high at this stage that it was becoming dangerous.

We were almost at the check out when my eyes were drawn to a large jar of curry sauce. They had my favorite, Patak’s Jalfrezi. “Stop!” I called after Davina, it was her turn to push. I reached up to the shelf and took a jar down. I dropped it into the trolley with the rest of our shopping and this is where the fun stopped.

Are YOU the disgusting person who casually opened a large jar of Patak’s Jalfrezi sauce last Friday, sniffed it, didn’t want it and put it BACK on the shelf with the lid not even screwed on? If so, thanks because as I put the family sized jar down, the entire contents splattered everywhere.

Spicy sauce spilled over the polka dot scarf, the foot spa, the running trousers, and the tinned tuna. It dripped onto the floor, onto my clothes and all over my handbag. The bright orange sauce went on my shoes, on the bleach and all over the luxury duck breasts. There was hardly one thing that did not have creamy Indian sauce splashed on it.  Everything was ruined.

Davina couldn’t cope. She ran out of the shop screaming and leaving me standing helpless. “What shall I do?” I asked an elderly woman who witnessed the whole thing. “I’d follow your friend,” she advised. The strong smelling sticky trolley had drawn a small crowd. “It wasn’t my fault,” I said, sounding like a child who was wholly responsible for the mess. Genuinely, it wasn’t.

It was at that point that a man in Lidl blue came over. “It’s OK. I’ll take this. You start again”. The shop assistant took our trolley away and cleaned up the mess on the floor. I would have hugged him but my hands were covered in goo.

Davina came back. I filled her in. “SERIOUSLY? We get to shop all over again?” She could not believe her luck. “This is the BEST day of my LIFE”. We did the whole grocery shop once more. Davina was high from the adrenaline rush of shopping twice in the same store and she bought even more second time around. 

I on the other hand, was too self-conscious. I smelt like a take away. I bought frozen pizzas and have decided that next week I might give online shopping a go.