Buying Food

At the week-ends, when she has more time to spare, Elinor Lloyd does her shopping at the big self-service food stores in town, for she can buy a lot of goods more cheaply there than at her local grocer's. Accompanied by her husband or her daughter she walks round the Co-operative supermarket and other large food stores looking for bargains. These goods are tidily arranged on trays and long shelves on which the various prices are clearly marked. There is plenty of room for the customers to walk about.

The shelves are well stocked with a very wide selection of attractively packed good everything from quick-frozen food to washing powder, from shoe polish to new-led eggs, from tinned fish to toothpaste. Elinor walks from shelf to shelf, filling her wire basket. She has to be careful when shopping in a self-service store, for the goods are so attractively displayed that she is tempted to buy things she does not need or can not really afford. She puts two large tins of instead of coffee into her basket. The same brand costs six pence more at the corner shop, so she has saved twelve pence.

She looks round for a bottle of Worcestershire sauce but she can not see any. A shop assistant, who is making up an order, approaches her: “Can I help you, madam?”- “I'd like a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. Do you sell it? - “Yes, we do, but I am afraid we have sold out at the moment. If you'd care to call on Monday...” - “Thank you, I won't bother” Elinor goes to the cash desk, where there is short queue. When it is her turn the cashier reckons up the bill on a cash register which automatically adds up the various items. In the meantime another shop assistant packs the goods into Elinor's shopping bag. Elinor pays, carefully puts the receipt and the change into her purse and leaves the shop. Before getting the bus home she goes to the market in search of bargains. The market is large, with well over a hundred different stalls; part of its covered, part of it open-air. A wide range of clothes, household goods, fruit and vegetables is on sale and prices are often considerably lower than in the ordinary shops, for the stall-holders' overheads are relatively low. Elinor buys washing powder 5 p a packet cheaper than at her local grocer's, and fresh fruit and vegetables: two pounds of oranges, half a pound of strawberries, two medium-sized grapefruit, a large cauliflower and two pounds of sprouts.

She arrived home exhausted but a little proud of having saved forty or fifty pence of the housekeeping money.