Panic at the Checkout

I waited in line at the Tesco Express to hand over my loose coins.

It was one of those combined mini-supermarkets and petrol filling stations.

For the sake of just putting £6.50 of diesel into my car to get me home I found myself well down the queue for the checkouts behind, well, strangely, only a male customer base.

It was most unusual.

There was no female in sight.

It was unlikely that there was a football or rugby match at the Stadium just down the road. Perhaps there had been a fire at the local pub and everyone had been evacuated. I tried to get a glimpse onto the forecourt in case a bus was waiting to take a male voice choir to a concert.

There were no obvious reasons for this hiccup in demographics.

I decided to pay more attention to those between me and the checkout.

There were no burgeoning baskets of goods as was the normal case on a work day evening.

Everyone in the queue was however holding the same few items.

Bar none these included a bunch of flowers, a box of chocolates and a pink envelope.

Behind me other men were entering the shop but did not make for the display of health magazines, motoring requisites or the chiller cabinet full of beers and wine. They simply loitered around the entrance at a large shelving array of floral displays, confectionery and cards looking a bit furtive and shifty.

I could appreciate the thought process, after all, I shared the male gene. There had to be enough of a gesture to show affection but under a budget of say, £10.

This resulted in a bit of agile mental arithmetic over a combination of gifts. Some of the men picked up one of everything but then had second thoughts and re-arranged the display. Others just selected one thing and then set off around the shop in search of other imaginative items to show that they had given considerable thought to the gift buying process.

They usually returned empty handed and looking even more frustrated and desperate. I shuffled along a little bit like a convict shackled to other offenders as transactions were completed.

The slow movement of the line allowed a bit of free thought amongst my fellow men. Logically, a bottle of wine seemed a good purchase to go with the flowers, chocs and cliched sentiment of a mass produced greetings card.

Yet more defections from the straggling line which took on, increasingly, a more fluid form like an agitated crowd. In a bit of an abstract chain of thought others decided upon a selection of fresh fruit, whipped cream and ready meals of a curried and exotic nature.

It was certainly a disgraceful display of ineptitude in all things romantic from those assembled. I was no better in that I had nothing to show for my participation in that Tesco Express apart from a VAT receipt for fuel.

I decided that in future I would try to avoid any small supermarket on the eve of Valentines Day.