Holiday preparations

It had to happen. For weeks the state of denial persisted. Adamant: "No. We are not closing down."


First, the pet food disappeared, then the wine, followed by the toilet paper and kitchen roll, then the eggs went away, returned and departed for good. The shelves emptied. Nothing was replaced. The cold compartment dwindled from three fridges to one as cheeses, butter, yoghurts, fresh pasta was sold.


Still the denial continued. "It's just a small problem with the suppliers." But there were concerned looks on the faces of the shop assistants. One dramatic morning the meat fridge was emptied and its contents ferried out to a waiting truck.


 "No more meat," observed one of the assistants.


"They said our jobs were guaranteed," said another.


 A supermarket that specialised in a limited supply of vegetables and fruit as well as water wasn't going to last. I had no choice but to swich allegiance.


The tolls of doom appeared with the notices: "this concern will be closed on Sundays throughout the month of August." Then the following week: "we are closing tomorrow. "The shutters came down. It had been inevitable.


I returned to my old supermarket to note that for a discount it wasn't half bad. There was a new pizza counter, the bread counter was bigger and the deli counter improved. The vegetables, they claimed, all came directly from the farm. Malicious tongues wondered where the farm was, and had it had any fallout from the highly toxic factory fire in Pomezia a couple of months ago.


The supermarket still had its plethora of rules, now played out at regular intervals over the tannoy: "It is severely forbidden to use personal shopping bags or trolleys," "Gloves must be worn to pick fresh produce in the fruit and veg department, " All fresh produce will be weighed again at the check out till." "Taking photos is strictly prohibited."....


There to enforce the rules and trail the gypsies as they do their shopping is the security guard Mahmoud. I had a run in with Mahmoud a couple of years back when I'd entered the supermarket with a plastic bag containing cat food of a brand not even sold on the premises. He ordered me to put the offending item in one of the lockers. I retorted I was only getting a bottle of wine, I'd take less than a minute and I wasn't going to comply. Just as well Mahmoud's a gentle giant, he didn't stop me. or maybe he thought I was crazy.


August is the month when a lot of Italians head off to the sea or the mountains. In preparation for their travels they usually go shopping and stock up on their favourite produce from their local shops. It would seem that not only are they suspicious of foreign food (it's well-known here that French food is inedible and as for English food...you don't even want to start on that) but also of the food of other regions.


Hence, I wait in the check-out queue, for the umpteenth time, behind a family piling on 10 kilos of potatoes, bag after bag of pasta and tin after tin of tomato sauce alongside three family packs of factory-farmed chicken,, a bottle of olive oil, followed by jumbo  packs of bottled water.

Food for the holidays?

None of the produce they are buying is hard to find in any other region of Italy or original or particularly interesting. Yet, when they head off on holiday a sizeable part of their boot will be full of food from the local supermarket. Of course, there may also be a financial concern. Maybe the food from home is cheaper than what they'll find elsewhere?


A colleague, Rachel found herself going on holiday with an Italian family: her son was friends with their son and somehow they'd got invited to her families summer house in the South of France. They turned up ready for the trip with a bootful of Italian food:pasta, tomatoes etc.... They were worried that they wouldn't be able to find pasta in France.


Upon arrival, the wife of the family busied herself in the kitchen. Water was boiled and pasta thrown in. Rachel's husband had stopped off at a French supermarket to stock up.


"I haven't come to France to eat pasta," said Rachel's husband, as he snapped off a piece of baguette, opened a pack of foie gras and dolloped a large blob of it on his bread. Rachel, in the meantime, opened the various cheese confections and whipped up a simple salad.


The husband of the Italian family looked from his plate of 'pasta in bianco', to the feast that was being laid down, while his son hungrily made a grab for some baguette and foie gras only to be rebuked by his mother. Did he want a stomache ache? Did he? No, he didn't.


"Would you like some wine," a bottle of rosé Cotes de Provence was placed on the table.


"We've got our wine here. We brought some Frascati with us," said the Italian wife.


"This is chilled."


But such was their suspicion of the strange French food and wine, they refused.