I nipped into my local Prime Time video store on Sloane Avenue on Friday night. I love it in there as you get a proper cross section of the community. Loaded Dads with their kids picking 3 films for a mammoth movie marathon coupled with pizza washed down with litres of coke – you know it’s their only non organic meal of the week. You also get trendy youngsters picking a couple of splatter flicks to watch before heading into the West End or the bars on Walton Street to try their luck and run down the trust fund.
There’s also the kids from the next door estate spending what’s left of their pocket money (that they got on Thursday) after the film hire on the pick ‘n’ mix – jelly snakes and, ‘Jacobs Ladder’! Pensioners too,  mulling over the oldies, a chance to be transported back to better times, “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore Dot”.
Friday’s rental arrangement was a little different in that all films were only available to buy, it took me a while to work it out but I was in the middle of a fire sale: 24 season 6 £10, 5 latest releases for £15, 5 oldies a tenner. It was un-nerving. I enquired if the store was undergoing renovation only to be told the Sainsburys Local next door had acquired the land to double the size of the existing facility.
Sainsburys and Tesco, not content with ripping the heart out of Britain’s high streets, have in recent years taken the battle to the inner city residential and suburban areas. The result is the ‘local’ and ‘metro’ convenience stores, gobbling up the sites of former bars, banks and independent traders (the prime enemy) peddling a nutritionally spartan array of high salt high sugar snacks and ready mades for your average IQ challenged lunchtime office worker or post pub punter looking for instant munchies.
If you want to prepare a square meal you’re better off buying your ingredients from a Network Rail mainline station concourse – seriously.  As for getting enlightened, and increasing your blood pressure, read about the dirty tactics of the big four supermarkets in www.tescopoly.org. Once you have, stop giving them your money,  support your local traders and farmers markets and do your digestion a favour too.

PS; Actually the Prime Time pick ‘n’ mix is a more honest option than some of the guar gum laden coleslaws and dips in Sainsburys .