Safeway on Friday - lots of people there;
Tesco at lunchtime - not much room to spare,
Hundreds of schoolkids standing in the queue.
Wouldn't it be nice
If they made the sacrifice
Of leaving lunchtime shopping all for you?
Every week the supply of provisions grows low in the freezer
Climb in the car and embark on a high-spending trip
Up to the carpark spread out adjacent ts Safeway
Get round the aisles and when bargains come, shoot from the hip.
Something for nothing is always attractive to shoppers
Those yellow labels tend to attract us like bees
Buzzing excitedly round the deposits of pollen
Raiding the bread shelves and rummaging in the deep freeze.
Some of the shoppers prefer to employ those green baskets
But I, knowing that it will put lots of folk out of jobs
And that the hand-held thing that counts up the money
Often gives incorrect sums when you press the wrong knobs,
Hesitate, preferring to use my own trolley
Not wanting to queue up to have my stuff checked
For the second time after I've worked out the total
Only to have my arithmetic totally wrecked.
It can be attractive to come home with stuff in your car boot-
Things you will need in the long run, not really just now
That's when you snap up those wonderful two-for-one offers
Those double or triple points: you've got to get them somehow.
Shopping is fun if you're not in a terrible hurry
Sometimes the queues at the tills are all three trolleys long
Only the cash-desk (eight items or less) is still empty
Then you must choose the best queue - and usually you're wrong.
People still say they remember the wonderful small shops
Where every item was ordered and brought; one by one
Purchases piled up like cairn-stones on the shop counter
Discussions on weather and holidays increased the fun.
Nowadays shopping is still quite a sociable pastime
More people go to the big stores than go to the church
So I wouldn't swap our Safeway for some little grocer
Whom everyone lauded but nonetheless left in the lurch.
