Super - thanks for asking

Have I ever mentioned just how much I like going to my local supermarket late at night? Quite a bit. Which is lucky, really, given that my window of opportunity for weekday shopping is often at 10.30pm getting off a train and on the way home and realising that I need kitty litter / cat food/ apples/ TP/ chocolate other random but suddenly crucial item. Why do I like it? Well, it's like a little party of shelf stackers, and like the supermarket has gone all scifi grunge and industrial with mega boxes and pallets and trays on wheels all piled up obscuring aisles, creating zany obstacle courses and hidey holes. And the shelf stackers are all friendly and smiley and talk to me about cat food or offer to help me find things (which I confess was once too helpful when I was crampy and grumpy and looking for tampons and really couldn't deal with having to explain the dimensions and materials and brand trifecta that I was looking for).

I like the fact that other people are in there shopping too. Many off beat characters, like cab drivers buying roast chickes, urchiny school holiday kids buying softdrinks, or very single looking men lurking in front of the tofu fridge, or tonight - my new favourite - a bearded bejumpered mountainy looking man squatted down with basket of soy milk and chocolate looking through the matchbox cars, meticulously, in such a way that there was no mistaking this for gift shopping.

I love that the fruit and veg guy went into the cold room and went through the 12 pallets of yet to be unpacked veg and found me the lemons. They were under the potatoes apparently. It took him nigh on 10 minutes and I just wanted a single lemon. You know, to urgently garnish my tagine for lunch tomorrow. He was very good about it. Friendly actually.(Maybe this is unnatural and they are all on some kind of shelf stacking mood enhancing drugs??)

So yah, yah to late night flouros and strangely chirpy strangers. Oh and to my tagine - smell that cinnamin, taste those plump little raisins, imagine how those chickpeas will taste...it is on the stove right now and smells just fab.