Tips On Grocery Shopping.

I have been told never to go grocery shopping whilst you are hungry, you inevitably buy more and you buy things you want to eat then and not during the week-I learnt this well a few weeks back staggering home from a gatecrashed party in wimbledon when my good (obscenely spoilt) friend insisted and walking to the 24 hour tesco nearby to buy ready meals: 2 hours, a bleeding blister from my deckshoes, and £30 worth of shite tesco ready meals later and we've woken my entire household with our inebriated attempts at microwaving. I wake up the next day to a hairy, sweaty and snoring teenager half on the sofa bed and about £24 worth of uneaten or halfeaten ready meals around us, do not ever go shopping when hungry or drunk and especially not when both!

I deviate, my original point is that from an early age I have consistently been fooled by my mothers promises that we are only stopping in to waitrose to buy a loaf of bread, instead of walking up to the house (five minute walk tops) I will wait or go in to hurry her up. Everytime we will come up with a weeks shopping and a further disgruntled grammar school student. This was beautifully illustrated this afternoon, my mother asked me to go buy us ice-cream-I was rather tired from working and being in the sun and wanted to sit down-she then said she would drive me down to get it. At this point she said we will drop into waitrose instead of parking so I can go to the tesco express on the other side of the road, this change of plan instituted because it 'will be quicker'. We go in to buy ice-creams, between us we reasonably decide that we DO need creme fraiche to make my mean guacomole, avocados and tomatoes. Immediately I find myself reading the best before dates on bouquets of flowers for my mother and wondering the hell just happened in the last two seconds, did I dream the previous conversation?!? 32 minutes later I found myself at the checkout till with £46 of food including: pastrami, olives, chorizo, wine, flowers, flower-pattern plastic bowls, spinach and the aforementioned necessary items. I beseech you to just write a list of what you NEED and for gods sake wait till you've eaten before you go food shopping.

I used to find this problem would occur when going to the pub after country walks with my parents. Being too young to have an interest in beer (oh how the mighty have fallen) I would sit sulkily watching my father take sips of his drink and calculating the approximate volume drunk per sip and by calculating the sips per minute I could then estimate our rough departure time (I wanted to play sodding computer games at home alright!) You should have seen my face as another round was bought, at least they would have the courtesy to buy me off with a packet of McCoys; not only would they keep me detained from my busy childhood schedule of sweets, computer games and tantrums for an extra half an hour but the bastards would eat half the packet of crisps they had bought me! Of course now this problem has been solved in the same way that an increasing number of my problems seemed to be solved, with a lovely, refreshing pint.

P.S. Similar childhood stories are welcomed below.