Never Be Beaten by a Naan Bread

Yesterday, as you know, I left the house after my football rant and dashed to Sainsbugs to gather the weekly fodder and catch a lift home with Andy, en route from work. I texted Heather and said that if she wanted a lift home from work, then we would be at Sainsbugs in the next half hour or so etc etc...

I arrived at the supermarket about thirty paces behind Heather, but because I am English and have standards that are far removed from those of the common fish wife, I didn't feel I could yell 'HEATHER!' across the car park in order to attract her attention, so I played wavy arm chase around the supermarket after her instead.

Anyway, I finally caught her in the potted herb section, and we began a leisurely pootle with a trolley, having a bit of a girly gossip as we went. Andy arrived as we were trying to dash through the biscuit section without succumbing to the charms of the chocolate hobnobs. The trolley was pretty full by then because I didn't want to make a return trip for a least a week if I could help it.

And even though we had mucho stuffo, I optimistically said, 'Let's go through the self check-out. Even though the stacking room on the self checkouts is minimal (no conveyor belt, you see) we can pile stuff up on top of each other.'
'Are you sure?' said Andy.
'Yes!' I said. 'We'll get through much quicker than waiting for a cashier.'

Oh famous last words, how they haunt me still.

Firstly, the checkout took a while to accept that we were 'using our own bags.'

But then we got going - Andy unloading the trolley and handing stuff to me, the blipper, and I blipped and handed stuff to Heather who stacked it into our bags.

'Make sure you bang things into the bag firmly,' I said. 'Or the weight checker will play up and not recognise I've blipped something. This I have learned from previous experience. You have to slam dunk your shopping if you want to avoid having to stop, start, stop, start all the time.

'What, even the trifle?' said Heather.
'Even the trifle,' I said firmly. 'After all, what harm can you do to a trifle if you slam dunk it? It's pretty mushy already.'

We were making good progress until the man on the checkout next to us placed his coat in our bagging area.
'Unexpected item in bagging area,' said the checkout.
I glared at the man with the stray coat. He was oblivious to the fact he'd stopped our shopping.
I tapped my foot and grumbled a bit. The man moved on, taking his coat with him. The Sainsbugs lady got our shopping rolling again.

And then we had a problem with a naan bread. It was a reduced naan bread - pack of four, with coriander, reduced to less than half price. Handy for the freezer, I thought.

I swiped the bar code. No blip. I swiped again. And again. And againandagainandagainandagain.
Blipless. Okay. I can always enter the barcode, I thought.
But Andy wanted to have a blip first. He was convinced he could make it blip. I still had a few bits to put through so carried on, whilst Andy leapt in occasionally to try and take the naan bread by surprise. But eventually all that remained was the naan.

'I'll enter the barcode,' said Andy, who by now was feeling quite proprietorial over said naan.

The bar code was about 600 digits long. And you have to enter it within a certain amount of time or you get timed out. We tried about 8 times to get this bloomin' naan through the checkout. At least. And sometimes, just to add an extra frisson of tension, something would shift on our overloaded bagging area and the checkout voice would say, 'please wait for assistance. Unexpected item in bagging area.'

By now I was at screaming pitch. 'No there isn't!' I was nearly yelling, completely forgetting I wasn't a common fish wife. 'You know exactly what's in the bagging area. There is nothing new. Pay attention to the naan bread.'

We had attracted the attention of a checkout helper.
'Isn't there a rule that says once we've tried to enter a barcode three times, we get the item for free?' I asked, a tad hysterically.
'Ahahahahahahaha!' said checkout helper.
'Let's leave it,' said Andy. Heather nodded in agreement. Both were hungry for dinner. But I was hungry for victory.
'Nooooooooooo!' said I. 'I refuse to be beaten by a naan bread.' (I may have sworn a little bit at this point.'

I flexed my fingers. I almost knew the barcode by heart. I had a time limit to beat. I was ready. Here I go...

764839264650000089500074897504730191911937546380987654324564785943287467289!!

'YES!!!!!' we all shouted, as the naan blipped. It was ours!! We did a celebratory dance. Quite a few people stared. I didn't care.

So the moral of this story? The value of a naan bread lies not in its monetary value, but in the amount of human tenacity it takes to get the flippin' thing to go through a supermarket self checkout.

It's a well known Zen Buddist philosophy. Honest!