The great melting pot of the market.

I dont know if you guys have this in the states but here in the UK there is a phenomenon of the super reduced. This like black friday for groceries. Every day when supermarkets have to get rid if produce with that sell by date. Prices can go as low as 10% of their face value. They release this manna from heaven at different times between 7 and 9pm so as to keep everyone guessing. The result is a whole eclectic bunch of bargain hunters hanging around like hyenas waiting to pounce on the kill. I got into this after my major break-up. Living the male chauvinist dream aint so easy when it all ends. 15 years of being banished from the kitchen left me bereft of not only cooking skills which are quite easy to re-learn but the meal planning was a mind fuck. I also have to admit that parsimony and occasional poverty (oh the pleasures of self-employment) had a part to play but taking what you can get, joyfully relieved me these painful choices. For example, this week I shall be eating chicken kievs, mackerel, roasted vegetables, and kale. Now you tell me when a single guy buys kale ffs. When its 6p a bag thats when.
This is not all easy to come by. It can involve hours of waiting, climaxed by a frantic scramble reminiscent of a cross between an a jumble sale and a refugee crisis food aid drop. There has been a few newspaper stories about people fighting over a 10p cabbage but it is the time spent before the battle that I find most interesting. Living in a multicultural part of the city is great but when do we really get to mingle. Bars are okay but limited. No muslims, committed family people or general non-drinkers. Plus the fact that even bars are voluntary segregated between smokers and people with lungs. Only in market do we mix. Normal shoppers pass each other by with at best a polite sorry for blocking the isle but us few who cluster like hitchcock birds, chatter. The range of hovering citizens is amazing. There are as you would expect migrants and welfare cases but also barristers and business owners. Where else would you find an Indian guy explaining to a French writer/mother about cricket. Our mini united nations follows its larger sibling with political alliances and factions but unlike the UN they are formed by personalities rather than race, religion or culture. Shirley a lady in her 60`s, who on a superficial encounter might come across as racist, is best friends with Psycho (a play on her name which is something like Siscio) a muslim housewife who passes over any meat items in exchange for fish ones (she only buys halal).
So this is how I get my grub. Once a week we meet for meat and cream cakes. Exchange gosip, bitch or praise staff and communicate. Outside of church or parochial groupings, all in the pursuit of putting food in the table for less. Yet communities are built on things like this.. .