Carol’s Column

When Carol goes into battle dressed to kill

I WAS run over by a trolley last week.

There I was, standing innocently between the dogfood and the superbraa cereal — the one that keeps your inners on the run — when a mountainous trolley pushed by an even more mountainous female, crashed into me and sent me flying.

Not only did she and her trolley send me sprawling, they knocked me into the great pile of neatly stacked and arranged washing powders, which then collapsed and blocked the gangway even further.

I lay there in agony, covered in the soap powder that washes whiter, brighter and cleaner, convinced I'd broken a kneecap, an ear or even worse.

And then, a trumpet-like voice burst forth.

“You clumsy oaf,” it bellowed. “How dare you get in the way of my trolley? You shouldn't be allowed to drive!”

My relatives, friends and acquaintances will not believe this, but for once in my life I was speechless.

Anyway, I couldn't speak, there was a packet of instant beef soup stuck in my mouth. It is not easy to be coherent with a plugged mouth.

I staggered to my feet and looked around.

This isn't a supermarket, I thought to myself, it's a battleground.

Skirmishes

Good heavens. Blood River, Vegkop, Ardennes and the Battle of Waterloo had nothing on this.

Wherever I looked there were major skirmishes in progress.

Besides me, two women fought tooth and nail over a stuffed, spiced, frozen chicken, while further down the aisle, two trollies were locked in deadly combat.

It occurs to me that supermarkets have been designed with one purpose in mind. To make shopping uncomfortable, impassible and hazardous for the shopper.

Take the trollies. The supermarket trolley inventor was a genius. I mean, what a wonderful idea to make an upright version of a wheelbarrow so that the quality of a shopper's life would be improved.

But somewhere, the design went wrong. I have yet to discover a trolley with four wheels that work in unison and go the same way. There is always one maniac wheel that insists on turning right, left or dragging behind.

Have you ever fought with a high-rise pile of toilet paper? The top roll is almost ceiling high and if you remove a navel-level roll, the entire stack comes tumbling down.

The larger packets of sugar and mealie meal don't fit on to the trollies and they always leak.

Exotic

Only the other day I bumped into a schoolfriend I hadn't seen for at least 10 years. “Carol,” she said, “you look so pale and interesting, what face powder are you using.”

“It's an exotic French make, only available in Cannes,” I replied haughtily. There was no way that I was going to tell her that what I was wearing on my face was a burst packet of mealie meal.

Such is life.

The traffic congestion is indescribable. Only yesterday I heard that one major supermarket was thinking of employing a traffic officer to alleviate the situation but the traffic department turned down the suggestion as they felt their officer's life would be at risk.

At the entrance to many supermarkets are specially designed rubber mats in which high heels stick for ever.

And within, empty trollies, like soldiers, stand neatly in line. Have you ever tried to extract one from its brethren? It's not possible unless you are Tarzan or Reg Park.

Vultures

And, even more tragic, is the situation where there is no trolley at all. Then like vultures, prospective shoppers stand ready to pounce on the first one that becomes available.

Worst of all, are the checkout queues.

They go on for ever. In fact, if you are homeless, you could move into a shopping queue and live there comfortably for days on end.

However, after much soul searching, I have solved the problem of supermarket shopping.

Okay, so it does look funny doing the weekly shopping wearing a crash helmet, stilts, armour-plated vest, a white overall, gumboots and carrying a chair on which to place my exhausted derrière as I wait in the check out line.

But it works.

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