A contribution of mine for the people’s panel on The Guardian’s comment is free section:
* * *
A strong smell in the car park heralded an in-store promotion. I hate being manipulated as much as I hate the smell of fish, so was immediately irked. It was the first time we had been to a supermarket for months, a visit prompted by curiosity and boredom rather than a desire to pick up a bargain.
We have never liked supermarkets, and like them less now since the lovely local wholefood shop we owned went bust recently, due, in part, to their behaviour. They take on brands tried and tested in small shops like ours and plant them at cheaper prices in strategic positions in their aisles. Then, when they’ve enticed our customers into their emporiums they quietly drop the products or replace them with watered-down own-brand versions.
In the past I’ve worked for companies that supply the big four, and can say from personal experience that they are ruthless when it comes to dealing with their suppliers too. They squeeze until the margins are so tight that the companies supplying them go out of business or are sold off for a pittance to larger brands. Despite our cynical and defensive attitude, we still succumbed to the Tesco trance and racked up a bill three times as high as it would have been if we had gone shopping in the local Co-op.
Don’t be fooled by the price cuts and the friendly visage, the supermarkets exist only to make the maximum profit for their owners; the customers are simply part of the equation, and that equation involves the customer spending at least the same amount of money on each visit. Tesco’s move to cut prices will have little effect on us, the damage has already been done. Who’s next? You have been warned.
* * *
Direct link to the full piece with comments
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/30/peoples-panel-supermarket-wars
The rush of existence, the crush of the game
Everything changes, it’s always the same
A series of poems (circa 1999)
On a Broken, Worn Out, Cheap, Plastic, Cigarette Lighter.
( i )
Oil processed, metal mined,
Gas released, so refined;
Cog turning, flint burning;
Ergonomically designed.
( ii )
reflections on a cigarette lighter:
distorted – not much.
( iii )
Shall I compare it to a source of light?
Or shall I simply call it flaming junk?
When it was new it struck and lit all right.
But now it’s just a useless, lifeless hunk.
Of plastic, metal and of gas composed,
A man made thing to do the job of fire.
It might be clever if I juxtaposed,
The foundry’s rush and a heavenly choir.
Singing its song it lit up many nights,
But now it’s gone and ever will reside,
On the council tip with the other shite.
Silting the globe, why did it have to die?
Do not believe its life has been in vain,
‘Cos from the dump it will rise once again.
( iv )
The thing is like a stick of light.
It is a bite of frost.
Its lion’s roar, its breath so bright,
A broken beam, it’s lost.
( v )
Fruit of mans’ hand,
We don’t understand,
How much you demand.
( vi )
There was a young lighter from Spain,
Who sparked time and time again,
‘Til one day it fucked up;
No more gas it chucked up.
And now it’s a piece of useless non-degradable landfill.
( vii )
(The Sick Lighter)
O lighter you ail!
The invisible gas,
That seeps from the earth,
In barely a flash,
Has left for the good
Of emptiness;
And its secret power
Does no more caress.
( viii)
Translucent plastic
Without a spark,
You were fantastic,
We had a lark.
But now it’s all over;
And not before time.
Served like a lover;
Like a friend of mine.
( ix )
Fire breathing monster gone.
Plastic body all alone.
Lying on the kitchen floor.
I should have chucked you long ago.
( x )
A lighter you are;
A delicious tool,
Filled with flaméd gas.
A finite amount
Of breath to give;
To burn like the sun,
‘Til your job’s done.
Then what?
Return to the Earth.
Settle to rest,
Your exoskeleton.
And quietly de-compose.
But you’re not the body,
So empty, devoid;
You are the fuel,
Now re-deployed.
( xi )
Dearly beloved,
We are gathered here together,
To represent an artefact -
A useful tool,
Dug up from the earth,
Designed by the Maker.
Put together
The molecules,
Thank Newton,
Thank Bell,
Thank Socrates,
And you might as well
Thank God.
But now it’s time,
To begin the process
Of disassociation,
Of flying away,
Of re-emerging,
Re-Use,
Re-organisation.
Rest-in-Peace.
(written September 2001)
I was wounded first –
the blow caught me in the neck.
I couldn’t breathe,
then –
with a whoosh of fire,
my mouth opened
and huge clouds of smoke fled out.
I didn’t realise I had such energy,
such love.
I smiled when I knew I was dying;
I always said I would go first.
You watched as I choked, incredulously,
not wanting to believe
in my mortality.
My belly shook, I retched and coughed,
but your strength,
the power of your gaze,
began to mend.
Then –
you were smacked in the chest;
a direct hit to your heart,
and you shuddered
but you didn’t scream;
there was no sound
yet.
That’s when I caught your eye;
that’s when I knew
we were both going to die.
In that silent lightless time
I watched, still wounded,
still breathing burning breath,
then –
you deflated with a groan
that shook the world.
I stood, shocked, alone in emptiness
that spread like nothing
through the universe.
With no light left, I crumbled too;
we sighed together, merged –
forever
in mounds of dirt.
Then
I knew that love can never die
not even then, not in that place
where the world was witness
to our hurt.
Things fail – bicycles, cars, washing machines, governments, recipes and businesses. A failure is something that has failed, fair enough. For me though, that word has always been impossible to apply to a person. Someone who failed to make an appointment because of a traffic jam may have failed to arrive on time but is not a failure. Life is a complex web of possibilities and the choices we make about which threads to navigate are influenced by every micro-facet of our existence, whether we are aware of it or not.
Blame is another word I have a problem with. It’s a very negative word and is used to attack and hurt people. This doesn’t mean that people are not responsible for the choices they make, responsibility is not blame, though the two terms are often used the same way. The point is, life is complex and as tiny creatures in this infinite universe where every nano action ultimately has an effect on everything, we can only pray we are making the right choices as we step onto the tightropes of those threads.
That’s the hypothesis. Now to the real world – I am a failure, I am to blame. It’s true. I am definitely responsible for the demise of what used to be a fantastic little wholefood shop. Pulse Wholefoods, which was a jewel in the tiara of Pontcanna, Cardiff’s lovely, leafy, almost-inner-city suburb. Pulse is kaput and it’s all my fault. I arrived with Rhian nearly four years ago and occupied the wonky premises, with its mythical aura. The shop was already in decline when we took it over but we had a plan. We invested everything we had and a lot we didn’t into developing the business, fitting new shelves, buying new chillers and freezers, installing a state of the art till system and expanding the range of products. It worked, turnover and profitability went up and we were ready to move on to the next phase and develop the business to include an organic veg box scheme, home deliveries, refurbished therapy rooms, upgraded kitchen, even a tea garden.
During our first year we learned a lot about the shop, its history and its previous guardians. We discovered that it was the customers who owned Pulse, not us, and we didn’t mind at all, in fact we felt incredibly privileged. The customers, a lovely and talented bunch of people, became our friends. We started to get involved in the community and along with Marc, who worked in the shop, organised a folk music event in Chapter Arts in September 2008, called Y Cardiff. We hoped it would be the first of many. I didn’t get to enjoy the performances myself since the concert was completely sold out and I spent the evening outside the theatre turning away many disappointed people.
We headed towards Christmas 2008 full of positive energy and looking forward to the buzz that comes to retail in the lead up to the festive season. We rammed the shop with stock, took on more new lines and waited for the customers to come and stock up with the best, most natural food available. There was something for everyone and everything for those people who like their purchases poison free and sourced from ethical producers. We had dozens of types and sizes of toothpaste, soap, shampoo, cleaning products, essential oils, nutritional supplements, nut butters, seaweed, tofus, burgers, chilled frozen, dried, along with all the basic wholefoods, dried beans, grains, fruit and seeds, a wide range of organic vegetables . . . anyway the list could go on.
We had everything in place, including willing and knowledgeable staff and we waited, and we waited . That Christmas was dire, turnover went down instead of up, beautiful organic veg rotted, we just couldn’t eat it all ourselves. We gave away binfuls of decaying fruit and vegetables to people for their compost heaps, stock started going out of date and had to be disposed of. It was heartbreaking. Something happened between the summer of 2008 and Christmas, the world changed, the credit crunch, the recession whatever you call it, had an immediate and devastating effect on the shop. People who used to spend thirty or forty pounds in a visit spent just ten or twelve, or reduced the number of visits or just disappeared, into the arms of the big supermarkets I presume.
That was over two and a half years ago and things didn’t improve. Of course, with hindsight, there are many things, micro and macro, we could have done differently, things to do with staffing, product range, profit margins, opening hours, bank loans, investments in equipment and what to eat for breakfast no doubt. But ultimately the simple fact is that turnover went down as a result of worldwide events in the financial markets. People reacted and changed their shopping habits, the supermarkets reacted and played a blinder, stocking an increasing range of what used to be exclusive to shops like ours, even developing their packaging to look like authentic wholefoods. Online shopping increased, trade suppliers started delivering directly to our customers to maintain their own turnover and people desperate to increase their income or to replace a lost job, set up micro businesses of their own or formed food cooperatives, working from home (even from their desks at work) with none of our overheads.
Do I really think that the demise of Pulse is my fault? I suppose that no matter how philosophical I get about it I’ll never completely convince myself that I’m not to blame. I made the wrong decisions, stepped on the wrong tightropes; but as time pushes Pulse Wholefoods into a memory, it is getting easier to come to terms with its failure.
So the shop is now closed.
There is a lot more to this story and no doubt it will come out in some way, some day, but for now we’d like to thank all the aforementioned lovely and talented bunch of people and hope to see you around.
