She pushed the shopping trolley down the first aisle – fruits and vegetables. She collected what she needed to replenish what the family had used over the last week and took some time to think of what she wanted to cook as a special for this evening. She had her usual budget of a few hundred pounds, which didn’t stretch as far as it used to but still went most of the way to filling a trolley with branded goods. She chose some bell peppers and courgettes as her extras for the week and moved on.
As she began to check the last of her regular purchases off of her list, she started to think more about the meal for later. She wanted something with a bit more zing than usual – she wanted some spice blend she used a few years ago in a curry that really blew the minds of the last family she was with. So she went down the world foods aisle and perused the Indian and Asian sections. There was no sign of it here after crouching and perusing over the bottom shelf. A store attendant idly stacked shelves further down the aisle, and she gingerly approached him with her nearly full trolley.
“Hi, do you know where I could find this fancy curry blend. I can’t remember the name or brand, but it was in this red and purple bag, not a shaker or glass bottle. And I think it was maybe Thai. Or Malaysian.”
The attendant took in her haphazard mishmash of information and thought about it for a few seconds, umming and ahhing while scratching his stubbly chin. “I, uh, I think it’s in the other aisle. At the, uh, top of the spices. If it’s not there it’ll be down here on the world food shelves somewhere.”
