Oops!

Opps!

Beanz, meanz, expensive

Similarly washing power and cornflakes

Some products don’t scan to the cheap

But wine is fine

And milk, don’t you find

The economy as good as

The cream of the crop.

And creamy grain is usually

Acceptable at lower cost, except

I think, sweet corn which I find cobby

unless it’s the giant brand, and pops with a crunch in the mouth.

The reduced section, a free for all of planted stance and elbows

a trolley parked lengthways across the width of the shelf

the owner displaying her chosen, fifteen quid side of beef

and aspargagus tips and echinacea drops

ponders reduced filous and a sad pork pie

I snake out my arm, bowl under for a sneak attack,

Before her hand slams down, like a dog protecting a bone,

On the lasagne

For my evening meal

Reduced by thirty P.

With a big yellow sticker that says

Oops!

Isn’t oops an exclamation of error?

Did they reduce it by mistake?

Does a lady sit at Customer Service

Battling disillusionment

Waiting solely for her faith

To be restored

For just one shopper to up with an Oops! And say,

‘I think this is a mistake,’

But they don’t

Cheap bog roll is my guilty secret

Why pay in excess for something you wipe and dispose of?

My bum was raised in the hard knock school of life.

It expects no better.

But smiles gratefully, when suddenly, there is a new man

And I buy Cushelle for a time.

Do I need anything else?

Oh, talking of men,

should I shop for one?

Oops! that would be a mistake.