Going to the supermarket is the best thing about holidays

“She’s come all the way from the UK and all she wants to do is go to Walmart!” my Louisianan mother-in-law is telling her husband about my holiday plans, with the half-amused, half-baffled tone of someone who’s just been introduced to an innocuous cousin of ET. I analyse the ‘candy’ aisle as if performing groundwork for a research paper, commenting on every tiny, nuanced variation of a product nestled between this bright, brash offering, and casting my mind back to the strait-laced Galaxy, Cadbury and Mars line-up at home. There’s something curious about identifying tiny differences in a sea of sameness But when you’re on holiday, food shopping becomes something else altogether. Unfortunately the closest I’ve come to travelling in the last 12 months has been moving house but even in the Before Times, when fun could mean something genuinely thrilling, like swimming in the ocean or kissing a stranger, going to someone else’s local supermarket, somewhere far away, was still one of my favourite things to do. And rather than leaving me sick of trolleys, frozen food and robotic beeping, months of my local supermarket being the only indoor public space we’re regularly allowed to spend time in has made me love them even more not resist wanting to visit when I’m next allowed further afield.