Tesco: The Reduced Section
In my second year as an undergraduate, I moved into a nasty little flat in Barons Court with a couple of friends. (I've posted a few stories before about the three years I spent in that building.)

Between the campus and our flat there was a Tesco. Not just one of those little 'metro' or 'express' shops - a big fucker, which claimed to be open for 24 hours, despite invariably closing at midnight.

The first year that we were in this place, my flatmates and I got into a regular routine of shopping there on a Sunday morning. Taking into account everyone's rather limited budget, we would immediately head for the "Reduced to Clear" section and fight our way past the other students, cheapskates and degenerates pawing the bargain-priced goods as they wiped the foetid saliva from their crusty maws.

And we would just buy any old crap that looked edible/interesting and was cheap. Pork pies at half price? I'm sure I'll eat them at some point. 40p off a pack of ham? I'll find a use for it. Girlfriend coming over for dinner? Hey - there's a big lump of Huss going cheap here! That'll impress her... (I honestly thought I'd scored a bargain with that one until I got it out the freezer that afternoon and found it reeked of ammonia)

It was not long before this became a standard stop-off on the way home whilst intoxicated to various degrees. On one particular occasion we wandered in there and found them flogging off iced Madeira cakes. Half price? Yep, we'll have two of those.

It is only in later years that I came round to the idea that I should probably ask myself whether I'd want these items at their normal price, or whether I would normally want to buy them but was deterred by the price. Buying something just because it was cheap probably wasn't the best motivation for acquiring, say, that tub of coronation chicken which was a suspicious shade of yellow and probably glowed in the dark. Or that pack of "Cheese and biscuits for one" which contained precisely three soggy crackers, a few lumps of cheese which were only distinguishable by their unique colouration and varying degrees of rubberiness, a square of butter you wouldn't even offer as anal lube to Robbie Williams before you exacted your horny-horse-based revenge for having to hear 'Angels' for the umpteen-millionth time, and, best of all, a small rectangle of plastic with one edge thinned down slightly to act as some kind of rudimentary knife.

I did actually keep the 'knife' for a while - in some ways it made the most delightful fusion of modern, plastic thermoforming technology with the 'vintage' design style of stone-age cutting tools.

But I shouldn't complain. Foolish though some of my purchases were, I'm sure the "Reduced" aisle helped my student loan go a little bit further, and certainly helped me narrow down the foodstuffs I would certainly never buy again. And provided some amusement in those evenings when the telly was on the blink we couldn't really afford to go to the pub again.
(LongJohnBaldry, Thu 21 May 2009, 12:48, 3 replies)

Should have gone at 11:55pm
Then you get all the food that's perfectly serviceable but will technically, in 5 minutes time, be past it's sell by date.

Of course, it's not always a good idea to go to an aisle full of 10p bags of jam doughnuts about half an hour after being thrown out of the pub.
(Concrete Cow, Thu 21 May 2009, 13:07, closed)

there was this time
i timed my entry to the store, perfectly. As i shuffled in the tannoy announced that 'all hot chicken products where now reduced'. The delie rotisserie thingmy was right next to the entrance.

I spied 5 bags of chicken drumsticks and thighs, all for just 10p each. I HAD to have them, all. So i did, much to the annoyance of another cheap cunt who was hovering behind me.

Getting home, i looked at the massive pile of chicken flesh i had acquired for just 50p...Say 25 drumsticks and 25 thighs...fuck, thats lots of chickens...

So is shouted the kids down and we proceeded to drool and belch our way through the lot.....

Fuck yer KFC family feasts, fuck it in the ass.
(Cancer Joy was short lived, Thu 21 May 2009, 14:08, closed)

Very good!
*Clicks* for the cheese and biscuits for one section.

This:
"I did actually keep the 'knife' for a while - in some ways it made the most delightful fusion of modern, plastic thermoforming technology with the 'vintage' design style of stone-age cutting tools."

may be the funniest thing ever written on B3ta.

EDIT: I may be unusually sensitive to stone-age tool-based humour because I've just endured 600 pages of "The Clan of the Cave Bear" at my girlfriend's insistence. A more turgid dollop of literary stodge you could not imagine. Still, yours was bloody funny.
( Scrumper, Fri 22 May 2009, 9:23, closed)