Whilst sitting in the departure lounge at Stansted airport last week wishing I had brought a book to read – I spied a book shop (can’t remember the name of it now) and wandered in to browse. Realizing that I have shelves of books at home unread I was reluctant to purchase a book for the sake of it just to add it to my already mounting collection – with these thoughts circling in my mind I decided to go to the psychology section and see if there was a book which I could legitimately add to my course book collection. Well the psychology books were really just ‘pop’ psychology – ‘How to get your life back into order in 7 days’ etc etc you know the kind of books I mean – no success there. As I turned around to see where else I could stroll to within the shop - this book ‘Tescopoly’ from the other side of the shop beckoned me over.
It looked interesting and as I loathe shopping of any kind especially in supermarkets I thought I would give it a whirl. I went to the checkout and the lady behind the till said to me ‘I’ve been meaning to read that book – my family for generations have also been in the grocery business but a new Tesco Extra has put our family out of business’ – hmmm touched a nerve there. Once on the plane the young man next to me was also interested in my reading material!! and came out with the comment ‘Tesco takes £1 out every £8 spent by British shoppers’ well he assured me that he not read the book because the line he quoted is out of the book (page 24)
Well I’m not going to give anymore insights into the book – just to say that the contents are Andrew Simms personal opinions and are not connected to the group Tescopoly http://www.tescopoly.org/
However, from the 1st few chapters Nigel & I decided to take up the challenge not to shop in a major supermarket for a month but to use our local shops i.e. butchers, grocer, bakers (an experiment carried out by volunteers mentioned in the book) and I will report back on our findings.