A wee story in the national news caught my eye this week.
Not exactly a shock-horror revelation but a disappointment to me. Tesco has dropped it’s link-up with French supermarket giant Carrefour after three unproductive years.
I was chuffed when the union was announced in 2018, with the prospect of cheaper prices and, particularly, a wider choice of food.
Dootless Brexit didnae help, but the scheme fizzled oot. So all supermarkets in the UK remain the equivalent of a pathetic “nil points” compared to those across la Manche.
La crème de la crème of retail
With my pal having a hoosie a pucklie kilometres from the Cote D’Azure, and not flush enough to dine in their many superb eatooteries every day, over the years we’ve grown well used to the Gallic supermarches.
I thought I’d gone to shopping heaven my first visit to a French hypermarche
The only foreign ones I’d come across before were those dire supermercado efforts on the costas; pokey places where the pongo of fa’ kens fit almost knocks you ba’-heided the second you step inside. Stowed oot with more British junk food than Moorish delicacies, unless you count the trays of microwave tapas. Gads.
By contrast, the French equivalents are la crème de la crème of retail. I thought I’d gone to shopping heaven my first visit to one of their hypermarches outside a wee town.
Quite apart from to-die-for clothes, shoes and handbags, the fresh food counters were tongue tantalisers.
A maze of white slabs brimming with, seemingly, every fish in the sea. Luscious lay-outs of lobsters, langoustines and all the shellfish of your foodie dreams. Beds of samphire and seaweed accompaniments. Where do you ever see such an abundance of seafood in a British store?
Huge displays of meat and every vegetable and fruit known to man. Oodles of olives. In the gourmet’s delight of the fromage section, banks of cheeses from every corner of France and beyond.
As for quality, the cornfed, free range chicken over there is like the “hen” my mum roasted donkeys ago – ie it has a taste.
Hyper U’s staff were hyper-useless
The first time we hit that Hyper U, as one chain is called, we went so feel we ended up having to buy a shopping trolley. (We’d bussed it there coz neither of us will drive on the wrong side of the road.) Once loaded with all our delish goodies, we could barely move the damnt thing.
Did onybody spik Anglaise at the local Concabs? Je suspect they thought I was havin’ a laugh
Nothing for it but un taxi. Sadly, the hyper’s staff were hyper-useless. Non, they didn’t speak English. Non, they didn’t call for cabs. So Mo took on the challenge of phoning.
Did onybody spik Anglaise at the local Concabs? Je suspect they thought I was havin’ a laugh. Nothing for it but to dredge up the dregs of my completely obliterated six years of school French: “Je voudrais un taxi. Je suis a Hyper U.”
All I got was (affa vite): “Comment? Je ne comprends pas. Ou est vous?”
Moi, now into le scraik: “Le supermarche Hyper U!”
Comes this quine, now in perfect, very droll English: “You mean you are at Eeeper Ooo? What time do you want picked up?”
Sacre sod it. She understood all the time, just wanted to put me and my rotten pronunciation through it. But, still, j’adore les Francaises and their super-eeeperooos.