AT THE SUPERMARKET

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 495.

At the week-ends, when she has more time to spare, Elinor Lloyd does her shopping at the big self-service food stores in town, for she can buy a lot of goods more cheaply there than at her local grocer's. Accompanied by her husband or her daughter she walks round the Co-operative supermarket and other large food sto­res looking for bargains.

These large self-service stores are brightly-lit and usually well laid out. The goods are tidily arranged on trays and long shelves on which the various prices are clearly marked. There is plenty of room for the customers to walk about.

The shelves are well stocked with a very wide selection of attractively packed goods - everything from quick-frozen food to washing powder, from shoe polish to new-laid eggs, from tinned fish to toothpaste.

Elinor walks from shelf to shelf, filling her wire basket. She has to be careful when shopping in a self-service store for the goods are so attractively displayed that she is tempted to buy things she does not need or cannot really afford.

Elinor goes to the cash desk, where there is a short queue. When it is her turn the cashier reckons up the bill on a cash register. Before getting the bus home, she goes to the market.

The market is large, with well over a hundred different stalls, part of it is covered, part of it is open-air. A wide range of clothes, household goods, fruit and vegetables is on sale and prices are often considerably lower than in the ordinary shops.

She arrives home exhausted but a little proud of having sa­ved forty or fifty pence of the housekeeping money.