Crackerjack!!

Since the 5p bag charge was introduced, I have been concerned that partner looks like a professional shoplifter, as he stuffs his large dog-walking coat pockets full of foodstuffs, because, yet again, we left the twenty bags we keep in the car…well, in the car. 

I have spent the past few months sitting outside Waitrose with the dogs, drinking my free coffee and watching, with much amusement, the towers of produce people are exiting with – because they left their bags in the car. It takes me right back to my childhood and Crackerjack* and on the odd occasion someone drops something I expect Stewpot to run over and stick a cabbage on top. I also see the smug shoppers with their hessian bags and I view them with a mixture of awe and jealousy. 

Although I think the reason behind the charge is a fine one, I’m really still not getting the hang of it. I have developed a technique, however, to get shopping out to the car without a bag – it involves laying the free paper on the counter and building up the food items on one half, then folding the other half over to form a sort of package. This works, up to a point. Obviously this technique isn’t one for the weekly family shop. 

So, I am not at all surprised to read in the paper, that in some supermarkets, thefts are up 50%. What I am surprised at, however, is the lengths I will go to and judging by my observations, I’m not the only one, to avoid paying 5p for a bag. There’s not much you can get these days for 5p, so you could say it’s a bargain, but it just grates to pay it. Then I get offered the bag for 10p and a queue forms behind me as I weigh up whether I can afford it. Double the price! Is it worth the expense? 10p bags have never been free, but I never previously bought one, because they felt like a luxury item, with their arty designs and thick, sumptuous plastic. They always seemed out of my price range and there was a free alternative for the less extravagant. It’s a ‘bag for life’ – not just for Christmas, or for one blow out shopping trip, where you were feeling flush! A bag for life, that will spend its entire life hanging behind the kitchen door. So we don’t buy any bags. We stuff coat pockets, make newspaper packages, build towers and vow to remember the bags in the boot the next time. (But we do pay for the shopping first). 

* Cultural reference to a children’s tv show I watched in the 70’s/80’s. Apologies if you are too young to remember, but for those of you who are older: “It’s Friday, it’s five to five and it’s Crackerjack”!!