24-hours: Conditions Apply

On a limited budget, I plan the week's groceries very carefully. I know that I have about £20-25 to play with, and hopefully I'll spend less than twenty. Thus, I have embraced food of the canned variety - spinach, mushrooms, chick peas, lentils and good ol' Jessica's Chicken of the Sea - and I snack on low-cost vegetables like carrots and beans, and fruits like apples and mandarins. My meals are regimented but luckily, I'm satisfied.

Problems arise however come the end of the week when my pantry is bare. Given the amount of cans I buy I can only carry one week's supplies of groceries at a time - because lugging my bags home is equivalent to weight-lifting with Arnie - so by Saturday morning I generally have only one more serve of cereal left and I'm know that I must once again mission to the supermarket. But yesterday I was left wanting.

Forgive me, but I need to vent. You see my local ASDA supermarket let me down in a big way. While I normally have nothing but praise for their low prices and friendly service, yesterday they caused me to scream blue murder - because they lied. While they claim to be open 24-hours, and large red signs don their building's facade advertising to that effect, this alleged 24-hours of community-servicing actually only applies Monday through Friday. You see on Saturday's they close at 10pm and don't open again until 11am Sunday. Fair enough, their employees deserve big Saturday nights out too, but not so cool that they are then only open a mere six hours on Sundays - that's right, 'open-24-hours-ASDA' is actually only operational 27 hours out of 48 every weekend. But isn't that when most people shop?

Apparently there's some fine print underneath their big, red signs... Unfortunately I missed it.

I woke early on Sunday to get my shopping out of the way before a very big day of socialising. I rushed out of the flat and made my way up the hill to ASDA - fifteen minutes in the cold and (almost) rain... I even rushed past an old man at a set of stairs in my haste, only to propel myself into the glass doors at the store's entrance. I ran smack-bang into a sign displaying opening times that asserted, "Sundays 11am". I was livid, and kinda sweaty from my walk/run. So I turned in a huff and marched my way home.

In hindsight I really should have studied their sign more closely, as that afternoon, after my day of markets and lunching, I once again trudged up the hill (cursing their big, red, 24-hour sign that blazed down upon me), and went smack-bang into their glass doors once more. Because at twenty minutes past five, ASDA doors had been closed for almost a half hour.

With little other option than to laugh at my own stupidity (for I had cursed the ASDA corporation enough in the morning) I made my way back home. Luckily I had a spare tin on spinach in the cupboard, Popeye would have been proud!