Artichoke Love

Summer has finally come to the UK, and I am soaking up sun through my pores like a plant that has lived too long in the dark and the cold. Someday I will live in a warm country, Portugal or Italy or Morocco. Ok, maybe not Morocco but the other two are definite possibilities.

I’d heard that Sainsburys had artichokes last Friday, but they’d sold out, so I went there at lunch. (Artichokes are one of my favourite food in the entire world, and in over seven years I’ve not been able to find them anywhere in the UK.) They were restocking shelves, and should be able to unpack the artichokes in twenty minutes. I went shopping, and picked up a lot of stuff that I really didn’t need because I had to have artichokes.

I went back. Still no artichokes. I talked to the same kid, who was starting to get quite nervous over my “don’t fuck with me boy if you want to live” expression. The artichokes were still on some big pallet in the back, all shrinkwrapped. I went back to work.

Still on a quest for the ultimate summer food, I went back again after work. No artichokes. I think I saw the same stockboy, but it was hard to tell because he did one of those full-body leaps through the air to fall behind the bread shelves, as though he was a soldier jumping into a foxhole. Bastard.

So close, and yet so far…Sainsburys, you are mocking my pain.