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Mixed Special Vegetables (1kg): £1.50 – It was the cheapest vegetables he could find in the whole store. It wasn’t that bad: a big bag of peas, sweetcorn, carrot, broccoli and red pepper was exactly the economical version of the “Rainbow Rule”. And if he ate only a bit at a time he possibly could have it for at least 13 meals or something. He had thought about cutting down on vegetables as well, but after skipping dairy products altogether (unless someone else was paying for it) he decided that maybe skipping even vegetables would be too much of a potential health risk - one that he could not quite afford in the long run.
Spaghetti: £0.41 – Between all brands of plain spaghetti on discount he spotted this brand immediately. All the others cost at least £1, and this one – on “special offer” as it was called – cost only £0.41, Still no one was willing to buy it, judging from the rather large amount of it sitting on the shelf when the others were disappearing like mad. He knew this possibly mean that this spaghetti would taste bad, but between his stomach and his purse, he would side with his purse any day.
Chunky Vegetable Pasta Sauce: £1.00 – Admittedly, pasta sauce was possibly a luxury item that he should not be even thinking about. But the thought of plain, boiled spaghetti with plain, boiled frozen vegetables horrified him. While he could endure Arthur’s cooking disaster if needed, he could not drive himself to accept simply boiled stuffs. After all, even Arthur’s cooking tasted like something (indescribably bad, usually), and boiled vegetables and spaghetti tasted like nothing.
But his hand did halt before touching the bottle of sauce. Because he knew, he simply knew, that one pound saved was one pound in his purse. It was only after his heart reasoned with his mind that, it’s okay, he would use only a small spoonful of the sauce every time and he would make at least 8 servings out of it and he would divide the spaghetti into 6 servings instead of the suggested 4. And since the sauce itself already contained tomatoes and other vegetables, so in the end he could put even less vegetables in the pan and thus having more meals with vegetables... then his hand could resume its course towards the bottle.
Mulligatawny Soup (5 for £2.00): £2.00 – He possibly should not be buying anything he had not listed on his grocery list. After all one of the students had told him that if one shopped only according to his or her grocery list one could save much from impulsive buys (never mind that said student’s grocery list always seemed to contain only beer, beer and beer). But 5 for £2.00! A tin of 40 pence soup plus a bit of water and a bit of bread would easily become two meals. And winter was creeping close – he shivered at the thought of hot soup, but not because of the idea of hot soup itself. He always felt so damn cold these days...
And so the tins of soup were in his basket before he knew it.
Bread rolls (a pack of 6): £0.50 – Picking the bread turned out to be the greatest struggle. If he just bought a big loaf of bread, he could have easily 3 times the amount of bread he now got with only a bit more money. But after 2 days of surviving mostly on plain bread (1.5 slices per meal, without jam, because bread with jam could not be kept away from the fridge for a long time. And knowing his own luck he would possibly get food poisoning from it if he tried anyway), a passenger’s gift of a tiny cupcake (because she thought that the whole world, the whole damned world, must celebrate her daughter’s birthday with her. He did not complain though – that cupcake later ended up as his lunch and much-needed short break from plain bread, and he was very grateful for that) and Arthur’s unfinished chocolate bar which he was offered on the flight back from Edinburgh. (He was quite certain that Douglas was giving him that look when he stealthily put the bar into his uniform pocket, but Douglas had not brought this up in his jokes – almost a shame really, as he had already made all sorts of mental preparation to brace himself for the Inevitable Jest.) He had had enough of plain bread. And he could cut that slightly longer roll into 2, so it would be a whole week’s worth of brunch that he would be having. And the best thing was that Arthur would possibly cease questioning him why he ate sandwiches without fillings if he ate bread rolls instead, making the decision to buy the more expensive bread rolls sounded almost alright now.
With the plastic bag in his hand, Martin Crieff, unpaid commercial pilot and man with a van, exited Sainsbury’s with a light heart. The weight of the bag was almost comforting, promising a warm meal at last. It was not contentment he was feeling – he repeatedly reminded himself of this, because he knew if he started thinking about how much he liked the feeling of having warm food in his system he would start questioning his decision to keep on flying, and he hated the conclusion his logical, and much more pragmatic part, would draw every time.
But this time he did not need to draw himself from That Debate again. His heart chose to suddenly sink as he recalled the number on the receipt in his pocket: £5.41. While that was not a big sum, he should have spent even less –
With a renewed vow on buying even cheaper next time, Martin started walking back to his attic of a home against the cold autumn wind.