Last Minute shopping

Buon Natale a tutti 

You know that Christmas comes with the need to make special arrangements and adjustments but when you get to be seniors you’d think that we would be a bit smarter or at the very least, well prepared. Well, we are, but we still get amazed at how prepared we really need to be. So, I set off at the crack of dawn Christmas Eve KNOWING that every mug and his mut is going to leave the “last minute” shopping until the LAST MINUTE – or, at least, the LAST DAY. 

So, we awoke at 6am determined to get to the shops as the doors opened for business. Not things that don’t need to be fresh – perishables that are best acquired immediately before consumption. Good thinking. So, when I approached the bakery to purchase the $4 French stick for today’s lunch I was greeted with the site of more than fifty folks who were even smarter than me and who had risen at least a half-hour earlier and were lined up as though they were early starters at the East Gate of Adelaide Oval waiting to enter on the first day of a Test series, waiting to shuffle along a U shaped approach to the entry of the bakery where you get your electronically issued customer number for orderly progression to the counter where you select your preferred loaf of pane.

ENTRATA 

Well, the Panini Bros boys & girls got up even sooner! In fact they must have worked all through the night because they knew that there would be paying customers begging to get a ticket at opening time! 

The electronic ticket machine presented each customer with their customer number as they passed through the entry door and the twenty counter staff were poised in two lines of ten, with one line stepping up as their compare attended to the first line of customers – very much like each wave of attacking soldiers emerging from the trenches at Gallipoli - so the line moved steadily. It is amazing that you don’t feel so uncomfortable standing in a line of people that stretches as far as you can see so long as you can keep walking – slowly and barely incrementally, of course, but at least consistently - towards the objective. 

It took the investment of a fair bit of time for a meniscal reward but, by the end of the exercise, it felt like an accomplishment. I proceeded with my Christmas Eve mission by heading the chariot towards the butcher to pick up the eye fillet which had been ordered a week previously – only to find yet another bloody queue! Only fifteen or so lining the footpath with another seven already in the shop addressing the counter. After the queue at the bakery that stretched out of view I thought my luck had changed but, alas, it hadn’t. Although the number waiting had shrunk it did not translate to a reduction in wait time! 

Meat takes longer to serve than bread – there is the fossicking, the sorting, the chopping, the trimming and the weighing which extends the “delivery” time on each transaction. It didn’t help that Nino’s relatives preferred to sleep in and two of the six staff took the day off to prepare their own Christmas meal, that the only method of determining which customer was next was the time-honoured Italiano tradition of letting the customers organise that themselves. 

 The fact that the cold room is located some distance from the counter – seemingly only just within the boundary of the same suburb – did nothing to expedite the whole operation. So, the joy of the short line soon assumed the agony of a bloody loooong wait! I had accomplished the objective of the Christmas Eve mission but I was really thankful that this Christmas did not fall in COVID times and I wasn’t shopping for toilet paper!