Branded

By a concatenation of circumstances too complicated to bother with I ended up doing my shop in Tesco's yesterday. Tesco is on my list of Things To Be Avoided If Possible, but it was moderately interesting to be there.

Different supermarkets, I have noticed, do different things well. Sainsbury's, for instance, has reasonable bread (well - the Taste the Difference range) and bagels, and a lime and cannellini bean dip which makes me make Cookie Monster noises of happiness. Tesco cannot bake to save its horrid life. All its bread is dry. I always get Tesco bread home and wonder if it's yesterday's; stale is the norm. Asda bread smells too bad to take into your house. There is Something Nasty going on in the Asda bakery, and I have no desire to find its results loosening my fillings.

Yesterday it also had No Diet Baked Beans In Small Tins. It had own brand, but let's face it, Heinz have some sort of addictive chemical that others don't, and there is no point trying any other brand for baked beans, tomato soup or tomato ketchup. They don't taste the same, and it is like being a cat weaned onto Whiskas who is now being fobbed off with Go-Cat to try. I find this impressive; lots of own brands just aren't worthwhile - Kelloggs, for instance, has no superiority in branflakes or sultana bran, and you may as well buy Generic. However, when it comes to Special K, Kelloggs is somehow - better. It's lighter and less clarty. Eating Special K is just like eating cardboard however you slice it, so this is the lesser of two evils; but isn't it when there are two evils that it matters most to have that tiny margin of increased bearability?

UPDATE:
A couple of days after the No Diet Baked Beans in Tesco debacle, I wended my way to Waitrose (accompanying my sister, who is too delicate for Tesco). It was a scene of nearly sylvan delightfulness. The aisles of Waitrose are staffed by teenagers of delicate beauty and low plummy accents, the tills by women of a tad more experience but similarly RP accents. Nobody shouts or blocks your way by gathering in mighty legions of the supermarket-uniformed with loading pallets in a circle between you and the milk. Not only did it have Diet Baked Beans, it has cheaper sun dried tomatoes than Sainsbury's and sweet chestnut spread. And its own brand food tastes like food.

And the moral of this is, you should not go to Tesco, where £1 in every £8 is spent. You should support your local Waitrose. Use it or lose it. Because if they fall by the wayside, where will you be able to get a pint of milk safe in the knowledge that you will never run into anybody you know ever?