Thursday, April 24, 2008

Aldi

I went shopping today. Dumped Daisy on my mum (thanks, Mum!) and shot off to Oban as fast as I could. 30 miles to The Big City! Bright lights! (Red, red and amber, green! Amber, red!) - more than one shop!

Spring is here at last. It's sort of sneaked (snuck?) up on me this year. But driving down to Oban all the familiar signs were there: primroses on the roadsides, lambs in the fields, and fucking tourists driving at 40 mph in the middle of the road looking at them.

I prefer shopping in Oban to shopping in Fort William. One of the main reasons, apart from the fact Oban is bigger, better and, well, just not Fort William, is the fact that most of the shops I use there (Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and the wholefood shop) don't play music. I hate music in shops. I hate the way the crap they play gets into your skull no matter how hard you try to ignore it. I hate the fact that hours after I come out of a store I suddenly find myself humming a Wham! song, or even worse singing it. I also resent the feeling that I am being manipulated somehow. The music in shops round here is either the amateur inane drivel that passes for our local radio station Nevis Radio (hearing its sub Hospital radio wittering usually makes me head straight for the exit) or mood enhancing music that is presumably carefully chosen to put me in a certain frame of mind, and presumably thereby more susceptible to attractions of whatever the shop is trying to shove off onto the general public this week.

Aldi*, that bastard lovechild of Lidl and Marks and Spencers, has started playing musak. Fortunately they haven't gone down the Radio Local road but presumably have a CD player stacked with music from a playlist approved by Herr Aldi or one of his minions. At first I was annoyed that another of my safeplaces has been invaded by the relentless encroachment of earworming music but I left the shop feeling baffled, unable to work out what level of hypnoshopping I was supposed to feel while having Silver Machine by 70s SF Psychedelic rockers Hawkwind played at me at almost subliminal levels.

I just took a ride
Buy fish fingers
in a silver machine
Buy fish fingers
and I'm still feeling mean
Buy fish fingers
I got a silver machine
Buy fish fingers
Do you want to ride
Buy fish fingers
see yourself going by
Buy fish fingers
other side of the sky
Buy fish fingers
Well I got a silver machine
Buy fish fingers
It flies sideways through time
Buy fish fingers
It's an electric line
Buy fish fingers
To your Zodiac sign
Buy fish fingers
It flies out of a dream
Buy fish fingers
It's anti-sceptically clean
Buy very sterile fish fingers
You're gonna know where I've been
Buy fish fingers
In my silver machine
Buy fish fingers







*Aldi, for those who have never encountered it is the Fortnum and Mason of budget shopping, Cheap but smart - well, smarter than Lidl anyway. Pile it high and flog it cheap Euroshopping. It's the sort of place where you hear customers berating their children: "You gonnae no do that any more, Craig, or I'll batter ye!" between the ante pasto, and Kalamata olives - I digress**.



**A female diger.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We don't have any Aldis over here, just Lidl. But do Aldi do the random bizarre stuff that Lidl throws up on occasions? Horseriding equipment this week only! Astronomy kit! My brother-in-law, never one to pass up a bargain, bought a Sat Nav in Lidl recently. As well as the basic satnav features, it shows the location of every Lidl in Europe. And you can't turn it off.

Junk Monkey said...

Aldi do indeed do the same random bizarre stuff that Lidl throws up on occasions - weirdly it is often the SAME stuff. Not exactly the same stuff but the theme will be the same. Some are obvious: start of Summer? BBQ stuff, Back to School time? Back to School stuff - but what prompts the sudden simultaneous flogging of motorbike panniers or computer peripherals? Who knows.

Phoebe said...

I'm suddenly hungry for fish fingers. Does anyone have any?

Missing CD? Contact vendor

Free CD
Please take care
in removing from cover.

Copyright (c) 2004-2007 by me, Liam Baldwin. That's real copyright, not any 'creative commons' internet hippy type thing.

(this copyright notice stolen from http://jonnybillericay.blogspot.com/)

eXTReMe Tracker