It's the end of the world as we know it, and I'm shopping

Did you ever read those stories about life in the post-apocalyptic world? You know. Books like Stephen King's "The Stand" - where (as my memory serves me) small groups of pandemic survivors travel cross-country to meet up with eachother; or Robert C O'Brien's "Z for Zachariah" - which chronicles the life of a 16 year old girl who thinks she is the sole survivor of a nuclear disaster, until a stranger arrives in her valley. Ooh I love that last one.



That reminds me, I need to buy button mushrooms...

The thing which always gets me in these stories is how the characters have to enter deserted supermarkets in order to obtain provisions to live off. I've always loved the idea of having free reign of a shopping centre. If it happened to you, would you go crazy and eat up all the junk food, or would you continue to eat healthily? You'd definitely have to learn how to garden, and quickly. All the perishables in the supermarket would, well, perish pretty quickly. So you'd need to know how to grow some more. Same goes for meat. You'd have to become a pretty good farmer in next to no time, or die.

Since a lot of people nowadays can't seem to even tie their own shoelaces without written instructions, I wonder how people would cope if there was a cataclysmic population-decimating event in the near future?

Anyway, I got to thinking about all of this while scanning my shopping for the first time at the Tesco self-service checkout. I've always been a bit hesitant to use it before, partly due to laziness (the cashiers are paid to do it for me aren't they?) but also, shockingly, due to my fear of "new" technology. I don't tend to embrace change. How do they know you're swiping everything and not just sneaking the odd item into your bag?

Turns out I'm not very good at self service anyway. I picked up someone else's receipt instead of my own. They bought Still water, Cheese sandwich, F/Coated Biscuit (which they then cancelled - I wonder what "F" was). Sounds like they had a very dull lunch.