Up On The Roof. Potatoes?

This is a weird one. Apparently, Budgets the Supermarket are growing food on their roof. I find this slightly disturbing. People may say it’s a great initiative, growing local healthy food in an urban (or suburban) environment is the way forward, trying to encourage rare species of lettuce and so on, and I’m sure that is true. It’s new – yes, innovative – certainly, but disturbing nonetheless. Why? Well. We here in Crouchers Green love Budgets the Supermarket. It is an institution like Hampers Heath, Primula Park and the funny Scottish man who sleeps behind the library. Budgets the Supermarket has been here for years and has recently rather like an adolescent, been slowly showing signs of growing up. I mean, now you can get organic food there where once there was only a pot-noodly sort of substance. Now you can re-fill your ecovert bottle so you can have dishes that aren’t quite clean, slightly cheaper. But growing food on your roof? I think that may be an ecoventure too far. I mean, we usually leave that kind of thing to The Healing Centre, which is a local whole food shop and palates emporium, which sells carob chocolate, gluten free bread and is always full of rather miserable people who tell you crystals are the answer to acne and who scowl at children in the aisles. I find this odd, because people who don’t eat meat and have a regular diet of roughage, enabling free and comfortable bowel movement should surely be happy and smile sweetly in a ‘I don’t have a blockage, how wonderful.’ kind of way. I’m sure many do, but not in The Healing Centre. They scowl, shamble and look pale. Shame. The staff are nice and always smile. But then they know that every time they sell a hand-reared, misshapen, organic beetroot for £4.75 they are making a whacking great profit so they should be happy. I don’t want Budgets’ the Supermarket to start behaving like that. One of the traditional attractions of Budgets the Supermarket has always been the ‘past its sell-by-date’
fish, the lack of organisation in the aisles and the friendly staff who have no idea where anything is. If they start getting too organised and health friendly they will lose their corner- shop charm. However, the main reason I am worried is the infrastructure of the building. What happens with the roots? Could they start growing into the building? Taking over? Wriggling their way into the cheese section. It’d be like The Day Of The Triffids… only with a nice salad. Have they thought this through? Do we want the woody roots of far eastern spinach wafting about over the deli counter? And here’s another thing. It’s all very well growing crops of fruit and veg’ on a roof but potatoes for example are way heavy and I’d hate to be shopping with Mummy one day, happily sitting in the trolley idly chewing on the cereal- bar box she has just handed me, only for the roof to cave in and eight and a half tons of rare- species spuds to land on my head. So there. I’ve said it. Budgets the Supermarket, we love you… but be careful!