After three weeks without leaving the
apartment block, it was my turn to go to the supermarket. My husband set about crafting
a maximum dual-action defence mask. Basically he sewed a piece of old t-shirt to
one of those eye-masks you get free on the plane.
There has been a lot of talk about whether
masks are effective or not. Trump has said he won't be wearing one, so I've
decided wearing one is probably an intelligent idea.
There was no queue outside the supermarket.
Nor were there police. Instead there was a young staff member sitting at the
entrance of the shop, wearing a full plastic face shield, a bottle of hand
sanitiser by his side. He sprayed my hands and then gave me some plastic
gloves. I don't mean latex gloves. I mean that flyaway plastic they sometimes
wrap bread in.
Once I had my gloves on I went to get my
shopping trolley. Usually I only use a basket because we shop for only two days
at a time, but today was going to be different. I hadn't even taken advantage
of being able to walk to the supermarket because I knew I would never be able
to carry what we needed back.
I began at the fruit and vegetable
section. My first item? A cucumber. Over
here in Spain you generally have to weigh the fruit yourself before reaching
the till. So I took my cucumber to the weighing scales and pressed the designated
cucumber button. Out slid the sticker. I plucked the sticker out of the machine
and went to put it on my cucumber. But oh calamity, I discovered the sticker
had stuck to the finger of my glove!
I tried to peel the sticker off with my
other gloved hand and I succeeded in getting it suck to that one instead. I
pulled at the sticker and my glove started to stretch ominously. If I wasn't
careful I was going to rip my glove. How many times could I ask for a new glove?
Also, if I got a hole in my glove, wasn't I increasing the chance of contact
with the virus?!
I looked around me. I was in the middle of a
battle with a sticker but no one seemed to have noticed. I felt like I was in the film Contagion and I was Mr Bean.
Why wasn't everyone else having the same problem?
They all seemed to be getting on fine, focused
on their task of getting as much food as quickly as possible. My absurd
struggle continued. The sticker ripped in two. Luckily the bar code was still
intact and stuck to the cucumber, so I smoothed the ripped bit over my finger and
continued as best I could to attach labels to the rest of the items I had to
buy.
My very serious mission became even more
farcical when my sack of oranges broke. If I had got the nasty corona germs on
my gloved hands, I had now successfully spread it across all the fruit.
Finally my shopping was packed and back in
the trolley to wheel to my car. Unfortunately my car was down a slope. Shouldn't
shopping trolleys have brakes for this situation? I almost lost control of the
trolley. Imagine how unlucky that could have been. The one time I take the car
out in three weeks and I crash into myself!
I wore my mask all the way home. Not just
because it's super stylish, but because I've observed I touch my face a lot
while I'm waiting for traffic lights. I only took it off once I'd washed my
hands at home. My husband later found it discarded on the kitchen counter and
lowered my health and safety score to somewhere below five. After all that
excitement, I think I'll stay in tomorrow...
Thanks for reading! You can find me on my Facebook Author Page or on Instagram.
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