It’s fascinating what you sometimes spot on the shelves – this was a recent shopping trip….
After being tasked (and succeeding) with repotting some plants and gouging seeds out of 2 2ft long dudis (which involved some enthusiastic sawing) during my regular Wednesday morning volunteering at Garden Organic, some shopping was done – at the local pet shop, town centre and supermarket: Down the road from Ryton, I noticed a sign by a building saying ‘The World Wang Doo Soo’; then in the pet shop several minutes later, there were lickimats for sale, reindeer flavoured cat food, ‘cat it senses’ toys, a ‘catnip infused ping pong spider’ (the brand of which was All For Paws) and unbelievable numbers of dog shampoo bottles and dog dental wipes.

The post office a couple of streets later seemed to be selling red wine; and 15 minutes later we were in the town. A sign for a music festival was tied to a fence; in Boots, an aisle labelled as ‘family planning’ contained some odd items, compressor nebulisers were on another shelf, little packets of Andrex washlets were dangling next to mens incontinence pads and ‘protective shields to absorb dribs and dribbles’, and rock tape, rock massage balls, head calm sticks, tubs of ‘plumping watermelon and pomegranate hair food’, and various different hair mask substances were downstairs (and I noticed an old red phone box that said ‘defibrillator’ on it at the bottom of the road. It was 1.50pm when we moved on to the supermarket, passing a ‘professional tanning studio’ that had a window above it with ‘Gilliand Martial Arts Academy’ on, and a Krispy Kreme doughnut lorry followed us into the car park.

At 2.09pm we entered the shop, a staff member was wearing false eyelashes, and on the shelves I saw sacks of 600 Yorkshire Teabags,1100 PG Tips teabags, 1kg boxes of Patersons Shortbread biscuits, and Smorgasbord Swedish snack balls. A random 34A plunge bra was dangling in the make up aisle; 1 kilogram tubs of peanut butter and 950g jars of Nutella were in the aisle with the eggs, 400g jars of banana blossom in water were in aisle 11, followed by an aisle containing 314g jars of Pelagonia Aivar (which said The Macedonian Kitchen on them); and I saw veggie jerky, £55 soda stream jet sparkling water makers, and 1 litre bottles of Absolut Vodka before we checked out at 2.50pm.