Aldi Good Things

Occasional, I pull on the bio-hazard suit and go to Aldi. When I do, I make sure to go to the middle section of the shop, the Area of Mystification, just to see what madness they have stacked on the shelves. Sometimes it's not the article on its own that provides the fun, but its proximity to another. I often find the phrases, “... and therein lies a tale”, or “The winter nights just fly by”, spring to mind and I end up giggling my way down the 800 meter checkout conveyor belt.

Purple cello next to under-car-light-kit. (ELO band members getting pissed and confusing which thing to 'hot up'.)

Artists' easels next to motorbike safety leathers. (Because Fauvism.)

A lot of the time, though, something will just sit there and beg all of its own questions.

What kind of day have you had, when you are forced to buy your wheelchair at a discount supermarket?

You are not picking it up from the medical supplier provided by your insurer. You are not being issued with it at the exit of the hospital. Your rehab specialist has not just had it measured and fitted and is going through how lightweight, modern and Jackass it is and how all of the young skate pros will be getting one.

What are the alternatives? You have dragged yourself with your lips through the car park, like you normally do, to get the shopping done but today, the answer to your prayers accidentally turns up in the Aisles of Bafflement? You needed to buy so many cans of suspect dog food that your spine and legs gave way before the checkout, luckily salvation was at hand?

I am a bear of very little brain, but I simply cannot get my head around the set of circumstances in play, where an opportunistic purchase of a discount wheelchair is the antidote. Even the aging couple on the pension, fat of fluid-filled-ankle and mad as a box of hammers (both available in aisles seven and eight) are not going to get there and realise that was what they needed. That happens before then.

Now. Let's talk about Baun tablets and mobile phones...