Dear readers, I just wanted to let you know that I will be dividing some of my essays into parts moving forward. This is partly because I’ve become aware that hardly anyone is reading my longer essay posts, which breaks my silly, little heart, and partly because it might be unreasonable to expect you to drop yourself and your life onto a velvet armchair in order to read a 10 page essay of mine. I hope you are nodding solemnly in agreement, otherwise feel free to let me know.
I wasn’t planning to go to Planet Organic. It was a bit out of my usual route to Sainsbury’s but I fancied the vegan coconut yogurt, which they didn’t sell in the small Sainsbury’s, and I also fancied a distraction.
If there’s one thing you can acquire in Planet Organic, it’s a distraction. The zen-like distraction of staring at their ostentatious, embellished packaging or the appalled distraction of staring at their absurd new product inventions.
I nod at the security guard, make my way to my favourite condiments aisle and start staring.
British honeycomb from wildflower meadows and hedgerows, with tiny bees flying in from the bottom corners.
Peanut butter and matcha with illustrations of Japanese tablecloths and tiny cups with diagonal shapes.
A jar of cocoa-infused almond butter, with illustrations of a dozen tiny almonds with silvergreen borders, interlaced via triangles with drawings of purple cocoa beans. Lovely. Lovely.
This is my version of a spa retreat. Instead of getting treated to a Swedish pressure massage, I stare at jars of spreads that I can’t afford.
Then it occurs to me, this something I used to do years ago, which always put me right in the thick of calm and relaxation.
I walk to the nut butter aisle, look for my favourite jar, the Gianduja hazelnut paste, and, once found, I glance first at the checkout lady, then at the security guard to confirm they aren’t watching.
Then I open the jar, lower my muzzle atop the jar and hoist a whiff of Gianduja into my nostrils like a delinquent theft. Ahh, the smell of hope.
This used to be my practice of daily mindfulness as taught by my old CBT teacher, who greatly annoyed me at the start when she kept insisting I need to find my favourite smell and carry it with me in an ‘emergency kit’ to self-soothe in moments of stress. I thought she was crazy. Of course, she wasn’t. I was the crazy one because I needed a favourite smell in case of an emergency.
I close my eyes, take a deep inhale of the nut paste and follow that up with relaxing every muscle in my body. Shoulders, relax. Chest, relax. Abdomen, relax.
I lower my muzzle to go in for a third helping. Inhale…and relax. Inhale…and relax.
Just as I’m about to embark on another inhale, I hear the voice of a child screeching next to my face.
‘MOOOOOOOM! THERE’S A LADY SMELLING JARS!’
It’s a little girl wearing a cowboy onesie.
I jolt up, close the lid, fumbling it into place, then turn around and walk the opposite way.
To my great horror, the child starts running after me, and to my even greater horror, I find that I am scared of a child because I start pacing in a half-marathon down the condiments aisle. The girl catches up, stands in front of me and holds her hand up like a traffic warden.
‘STOOOOOOOP!’ she screams.
I stop by default, and as soon as I do, I’m annoyed at myself. What kind of a 35 year old woman obeys the instructions of a 7 year old?
The next few seconds, we are locked in mutual staring and mutual anticipation until I snap out of it and walk around her and onto the next aisle. She does not, thankfully, come after me.
I take a deep breath and sigh out.
I can see how this could happen. My daily grocery outfit lacks authority. I’m wearing a grey tracksuit, topped up by my usual silicone-flap glasses for dry eyes, a cap and a huge Sainsburys bag that I use for the daily grocery shop.
After a while, I remember that I wanted yogurt and walk two aisles down to the dairy refrigerator.
The Coconut collab, usually at £2.99, is now £3.99. Jesus.
After this, all I seem to notice are pricetags.
£14.99 for 30 grams of Matcha powder.
£4.99 for maravilla raspberry preserve.
£7.50 for a tiny bottle of Cherry Kefir.
With every passing price tag, a new weight is added on my shoulders, and I feel myself pressed against and heavy, stumbling about the narrow aisles of Planet Organic.
I lock eyes with a Pistachio Gorgonzola, which looks exactly like a regular Gorgonzola. I wonder how they did that.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I notice a strange tightening around my chest, and a tide of anxiety flows over me.
It’s strange really. I seem to be having a nervous breakdown in a Planet Organic store.
Then it occurs to me that this is all making an awful lot of sense. After all, there was that thing I was actively trying to misplace in my mind. I didn’t have a job anymore.
On my previous outing to Planet Organic, I was equipped with a corporate job, but since the redundancy, my bank balance had been diminishing day by day without the usual monthly replenishment, and I had started seriously worrying about money.
Here I was once again. My plan to distract myself with an outing had backfired. It turns out that what’s even worse than worrying about money whilst sitting at home is worrying about money whilst staring into the blue, fungal eyes of a £6.99 Pistachio Gorgonzola.
The idea, in hindsight, was absurd. I’m an unemployed, struggling writer with a desperate need to write and an even more desperate need for money, a dilemma which had been driving me mad for some time, and I actually thought the place to forget about this central dilemma of my life was Planet Organic.
Now, someone else might’ve thought they would simply acquire the burden of a new corporate job and the restorative effect that followed on the bank balance, but there was the snag. I had decided to only look for part time jobs so I could spend more time on my writing. That was the very snag of the thing.
Walking about, I find myself in the bread aisle and remember that I needed bread. I start looking for the basic £2 wholemeal toast that they always used to stock but can’t find it.
I scour through dozens of price tags and dozens of bread in cellophane plastic, most of them called celtic or rustic, and I lower my body down from left to right and back the other way, clockwise and anti-clockwise, looking for a loaf of bread that costs about £2.
I start to feel dizzy because this is one of those chores that drains me. Looking for something and not finding it, or rather, in this case, looking for something that does not exist.
It is often in the failure of one pursuit that I become convinced in the as of yet unattested failure of another pursuit, and that is what happens now.
I can sense it. I can sense the wave of crippling doubt. The heavy load is back on my shoulders again.
You can’t make a living as a writer. What are you doing? What are you thinking?
Hit by a sudden dizzy spell, I close my eyes and rest my hands against my tighs.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I mutter.
‘Oh no, it’s fine, take your time,’ a woman from behind says.
I turn around and see a woman with a perfect blow-dry holding a stroller. She’s trying to pass, and I’m blocking the pathway.
‘Oh, sorry!’ I say, moving out of the way and wondering how much of my bread-related breakdown she saw.
‘No, really - please, pick your bread.’
Obviously, telling this woman I’m scouring through price tags because I want to be a writer is out of the question, so I grab the nearest loaf, a 100% rye and get out of her way.
‘That is an excellent choice. Really lovely and dense,’ the woman says as she passes.
‘Oh yeah! Can’t wait to try it,’ I say, smiling.
As soon as she’s passed, I chuck the rye bread back on the counter, but it lands on the edge of the flimsy, white plastic divider, breaking it in it’s fall, and all loafs from the second tray flop out onto the floor. I look down at a dozen individually wrapped loafs of bread lying flippantly on the floor. Then I crouch down and start returning them to a different shelf, one loaf at a time.
‘Is everything alright here?’ a voice asks behind me.
I lived in London for a semester and used to shop at the Sainsbury’s on Cromwell Road. I have fond memories of the magnificent assortment of cheese I called the “wall ‘o’ cheddar” and the similarly impressive “wall ‘o’ meusli” neither of which has any equivalent here in the United States.
I suppose if one has to have a favorite scent, a nut-butter is a good one to have, unless one is allergic, that is.
Your essays are always worth the read, long or short, Rosana! Dividing them into multiple parts only increases the anticipation for your next one, so that’s a good thing!
You have a funny, relatable way of writing that I can't wait to read what's next!