I Buy Groceries. Yum!

In the UK, free range eggs are wonderfully affordable

You can’t really know me without knowing where I buy groceries. If I happen to be in Kingston-on-Thames, I buy them at the nearest branch of Aldi, one of the two German discount supermarket chains much beloved by British (and American expatriate) pinchpennies. The space used to be occupied by the other German discount chain, Lidl, and not just any Lidl, but one specializing in comestibles for which no American expatriate could have hoped to be emotionally prepared. Kangaroo nostrils, anyone? It’s right across from Poundland, at which good luck finding anything in these inflated times for less than £1.50. Approximately 100 percent of its employees seem to be eastern European expats.

Every few months, just because I need something in a hurry, I’ll walk the 150 metres to the local Tesco Micro, Tesco being the UK’s biggest supermarket chain, and the Ashburnham Road Tesco Micro being the cultural hub of our little community. Elsewhere, Tesco stores are so gigantic that local bus stops are named after them. They have medium-sized stores, with far fewer products to choose between, like those in Richmond and Teddington. None of the stores is actually called Tesco Micro. I made that up to try to amuse you, and ours hasn’t had a white employee for around a decade now.

Top, an early Lidl in Germany. Bottom, a modern Lidl, and Emiliano Zapata, with his emphatic mustache.

The big Lidl in Norbiton, most of the way between Ham, where Mrs. Mendelsohn (she prefers the original, legal spelling) and I reside, and Kingston, has an actual white employee, of whose pronouns one can’t be sure. He or she has greasy, thinning abdomen-length hair, but also a mustache so fuzzy it makes Bob Dylan impersonator Timothée Chalmet’s look like Emilio Zapata’s. They seem to have lost their eccentric Italian cashier, a man of many bracelets and many piercings whom I used to greet him with “Io non sono attacabottoni” (I am not a bore (literally, I am not someone who’ll tell you stories so long and tedious that I could sew buttons on your shirt while telling them)), attacabottoni being one my my favorite words in Italian. Completely unamused, he would scowl at me over the tops of his reading glasses and begin sliding my purchases over his magic scanner without comment.

The gigantic Lidl in Norbiton used to be a Wickes DIY megastore. When I returned to England in 2015 after almost three years back in my semi-native southern California, I bought some things with which I hoped to construct a portable drum riser. The riser never got instructed and, after a succession of defections and firings, the Freudian Sluts slinked into the dustbin of popular music history.

Lidl and Aldi are cheap largely because they offer the shopper a choice between their own brand (of mustard, say, or what the Brits call tartare sauce) and going somewhere else. (One of Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s megastores will have half a dozen brands of mustard.) The bigger stores have aisles in which one can find clothing, shoes, and Inverter Flux Cored Wire Welders, among other other stereotypically masculine merchandise. This Class A welding device is not intended for use in residential areas where the power is supplied via a public low-voltage supply system.

There is always music playing at the big Lidl in Noribon, and it’s always the same music. Cyndi Lauper. Dire Straits, Jackie Wilson. Aztec Camera’s sole hit. “Funky Town”. And, regrettably, Fontalla Bass’s tuneless “Rescue Me”, which I loathed as a teenager listening to KFWB on his little transistor radio under the covers after lights-out, and which I continue to loathe 60 years later. In the last five years or so, I have finally become able to improvise vocal harmonies on the fly. I sing along with the Jackiettes, or whatever they were called, on Mr. Wilson’s awkwardly entitled “(Your Love Is Lifting Me) Higher and Higher”, hoping that a fellow shopper will add another part, but that wouldn’t be very British.

I can see how hearing “Funky Town” nine times a shift might inspire one to neglect his or her personal hygiene. Just one hearing makes me yearn for deafness.

Why Lidl rather than Aldi? Because Lidl has its own brand of soft-baked triple-chocolate cookies, which are sublime. Aldi has its own vegan line, but the Kingston store is too small to stock the chicken Kiev that I used to enjoy so much. (Getting up to the much bigger New Malden store would require an additional bus ride. Mrs. Mendelsohn sold her little car a few years ago when we realized that the Aldi in New Malden was the only place we ever drove it.) The korma sauce I bought at Aldi a few weeks ago was so revolting that I put most of it down the sink, and I am not one to waste food.

Mrs. Mendelsohn will verify that I always become mildly excited on espying a Lidl in a foreign country, like Malta, even though the one in Almuñecar, Granada, Spain, was where my phone was stolen late in 2019.