A visit to Aldi's, exploring a new supermarket world ...

Gilray or Rowlandson would surely enjoy a visit to a Morrisons or a Tesco - they would be able to sketch a rare gallery of creatures with their darting, forensic, pens - 

Whenever I'm with Sophie or Tessa, wheeling our trolley past the queue for the scratch cards, we mouth silently to each other our anthem  for such occasions - oh, the humanity - 

I have sometimes strayed into an Asda so large it could house an airship - I have stared, fascinated, at the carpets of ham,  the unending vistas of ready meals, nets of clementines and trays of ferocious lagers - 

Two weeks before Christmas, we visited an Aldi in Poole - 

Varnsey swore by Worthing's Aldi - there, he said, he could buy sacks of chestnuts, millstones of Camembert, fish the size of torpedoes and still have enough change from a fiver for a pint of Doom Bar - 

So it was we wandered past a Great Wall of China made from tins of dog food, an artful installation of jammy dodgers - 

I could stay here all day, I thought, looking at these mid European brand names, learning a new supermarket etiquette -