The Price of Cauliflower

There was a time, gentle reader, and not so very long ago, when a man of reasonable intellect and a modest pocket could stroll into his local purveyor of foodstuffs, proffer a shiny half-crown, and emerge with enough groceries to feed a small regiment, or at the very least, three hungry factory workers and a medium-sized dog.

Not so today.

Yesterday, I heard a tale of considerable woe from a local man known as ‘Old Ray’. He embarked upon a perilous expedition to the local mega-market, a cavernous, neon-lit purgatory designed by architects who clearly failed the entrance exam for Hell but found gainful employment layout-planning for Tesco’s. His mission? To procure the basic ingredients for a traditional British stew.

He told me that what he encountered was a horror to freeze the blood of even the most hardened occultist.

Here’s his story.

He approached the vegetable aisle. There, nestled amongst the misting devices (which he was convinced were spraying people with mild tranquillisers to keep them from rioting over the price of parsnips), sat a single, unassuming cauliflower. It was not a magical cauliflower. It did not glow with an inner celestial light, nor did it whisper the secrets of the universe.

Yet, the price tag affixed to its crinkly green leaves read £3.50.

Three pounds and fifty pence! For a vegetable that is, let’s be perfectly honest, nothing more than a cabbage that has suffered a terrible fright.

He turned to a passing shelf-stacker, a young lad whose eyes held the hollow, haunted look of one who has gazed too long into the barcode-scanner of the damned.

"Pardon me, young man," he said, gesturing to the brassica of gold. "But has this particular specimen been blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury? Or perhaps it was grown in the rich, volcanic soil of Atlantis?”

The lad merely whimpered, muttered something about "unexpected items in the bagging area," and scurried off into the warehouse where I believe they keep the portal to the Seventh Dimension. Old Ray didn’t have an opinion on that.

We are being swindled, Britain. And do not let the economists fool you with their talk of "supply chain issues" and "global inflation." I know the truth. I have consulted the ancient texts (one called The Almanac of Grocery Shopping written by my Gran in 1972).

This is not inflation. This is Shrinkflation-by-Occult-Means.

Consider the humble potato. Once the sturdy backbone of the Empire. Now? They are selling them in bags of five. Not five pounds. Five individual potatoes. And they are getting smaller. We ordered a pack last week, in our shopping delivery, they looked less like a harvest and more like a collection of fossilised sparrow eggs. I suspect the supermarkets have acquired a surplus Shrink-Ray from a bankrupt supervillain in Birmingham.

And don’t get me started on the self-checkout machines.

These Dalek-voiced usurpers of human interaction are not there for our convenience. They are demonic altars. Have you ever tried to buy a packet of painkillers and a single onion?

"Please place the item in the bagging area."
"I have placed it."
"Unexpected item in the bagging area."
"It’s an onion. You can see it’s an onion. I can see it’s an onion.”
"Please wait for assistance."

And there you stand, while a red light flashes above your head, branding you a criminal in front of the entire high street, waiting for a supervisor who is currently busy explaining to an elderly lady that she cannot pay for her Paxo stuffing with buttons.

I put it to you, dear reader, that the major supermarket chains have formed a secret cabal with the ancient Druids of Wiltshire. They are driving up the price of butter to force us into a state of physical weakness, making us ripe for conquest by the secret mole-people who live beneath the District Line, Old Ray didn’t know where the District Line was. When I explained, he still didn’t know.

Anyway, either that, or they’re just greedy bastards.

My advice? Avoid the supermarket entirely. Do as Old Ray now does. He brews his own beer in the bath, cultivates a secret crop of oversized marrows in the allotments behind the gasworks, and if you must have meat, do not look too closely at what the local butcher refers to as "the mystery special."

Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to make a brew. We have teabags that Old Ray gave us. I’m not sure they will be to our taste since they have tea brewed from nettles in them. But at least they didn’t cost more than a small island in the Pacific.