The Supermarket Christmas Apocalypse

Well, I know I said the last post would probably be the final one before Christmas, but then I spent a while making Christmas Cupcakes (they are sort of like miniature Christmas cakes, only more cakey, with rum and dried fruit) and Mum told me I should post my creations online. So here they are!

I have endeavoured to cover the three main languages spoken by the bulk of my readers (English, Spanish, Portuguese). If your language isn’t covered, it’s not because I don’t love you, it’s because I don’t speak it. And I know all of you speak English. And I still wish you a Merry Christmas.

Just so you know, it was no easy feat getting the ingredients for these cupcakes. I know the apocalypse didn’t happen (funny, that) but it felt like the world was ending in Morrisons supermarket Huddersfield yesterday. I should’ve known when it took me 30 minutes to find a parking space that I ought to turn around, but instead I soldiered on to get my icing sugar, rum and whole milk and joined the longest queue in human history, only to wait for more than an hour to pay for my 15 or so items. I have honestly never seen anything like it in my life: queues of hundreds of people the length of the entire supermarket, blocking all the aisles and corridors, people scrambling for the last turkey and trolleys overflowing with mince pies and sherry bottles.

“It’s Blitz mentality in ‘ere!” remarked a Yorkshire man at one point, as customers guarded each others’ places in the queue while they went to fetch items they’d forgotten, and I went to grab bottles of ice-cold water for myself and another stranger as we both sweated and choked with thirst in aisle 22. (The Christmas items aisle – one of the worst to be stuck in in an Apocalypse scenario on Christmas Eve Eve, surrounded by enormous tins of Quality Street and Roses and sweet packets adorned with different kids’ celebrities’ faces to make them sell better. (Do kids really think their One Direction jelly sweets actually have anything whatsoever to do with One Direction, seriously?))

Eventually, after an entirely exhausting hour and a half in Morrisons, I managed to pay for my items, by which point my friend had made almost the entire journey from London to Wakefield. At least the cakes turned out nicely.

All that remains to be said is Merry Christmas.