Supermarketaholics Anonymous

I do my supermarket shopping online and it arrives every Monday morning. I shop online mainly because of the sheer volume we buy each week with a family of six – it’s easier when I don’t have to cart it home and lug it in myself.

That and because groceries aren’t immune to my deranged shopping impulses. My shoe and handbag problem doesn’t discriminate and extends its love all the way to the supermarket and beyond.

I’m one of those people who can pop into a shop to buy some ice cream and then feel so guilty about it that I decide I’m going on a diet straight away. So then I buy an entire trolley of healthy diet food for my new wonder diet. Except I still buy the ice cream. Because I’m pretty sure all the goodness of the other food totally counteracts the ice cream calories.

This week I went to the supermarket to buy some pink biscuits and pink sweets for Holly’s birthday party this weekend. I didn’t need to buy anything else because I’d had my shopping delivered the day beforehand so I went straight to the biscuits and sweets aisle, like a thrifty shopper would.

And I came out with this. £108 worth of things I didn’t need. Like some prawns, and goats cheese, olives, peaches, a nice looking healthy salad I’ll probably throw out in a few days time, grapes for my kids that don’t eat grapes, and a mop.

I just don’t know what’s wrong with me. When I was at the till looking at my shopping in disgust, I turned around and saw the end of aisle shelf that is designed to suck in people like me and noticed Heston Blumenthal’s christmas pudding was available . . and because I missed out last year, why not get in early? I didn’t actually want one last year but should I have wanted one I would have missed out. There is something so very wrong with that logic.

Anyway it has a whole candied orange in the centre of it. I don’t even like candied orange or christmas pudding for that matter either but I bought it anyway because I’m an idiot.

Please tell me it’s not just me that suffers this warped behavioural problem?