Decimated

I went to the 'So Long, Somerfield' clearance sale and ended up with a very odd assortment of items from their much-depleted stock.  I went on Wednesday afternoon (they were closing at 5.00 pm on Thursday) and found the whole place pretty much decimated already.  It reminded me very strongly of visiting the GUM department store in Moscow in the mid-80's - very little on the shelves and what was there was most odd.

Anyhoo, I ended up with a few decent bargains at 75% off the original price including, a bottle of Baby Bio for 46p, a pack of 8 kitchen roll for £1.53 (these were only 50% off but still an excellent bargain - even cheaper than Aldi's own brand - and it seemed everyone at the checkout had a pack of these in their trolley,) energy-saving lightbulbs for 24p each, two packs of organic figs 74p each, two packs of fair trade Earl Grey tea bags (again, only 50% off on those but still a good bargain.)  A humungous pack of tea lights for 32p (always useful even if you find, as I did, that I still had A LOT of them lurking in the sideboard drawer.  Ah well, we're good with tea lights from here to eternity now!)  There must have been other things but I'm darned if I can remember what they were now.  I know I also got four pints of organic milk (last chance of organic anything for 8 days) and some loo roll but neither of those were reduced, although the loo roll was on special offer.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the 'bargains' as a lot of the stuff wheeled out I'd never acutally noticed them selling in that shop before.  Maybe they'd shipped it in specially to get rid of it - who knows.  I didn't bother going back on Thursday as I expect by then the shelves would have been stripped completely bare.  Never mind, I was happy with what I got - even if it was a very odd selection of items.

I noticed there was a large article in Thursday's 'Daily Telegraph' extolling the virtues of stalking 'Mr Reducer' (the person wielding the reduced-price sticker gun) in supermarkets (in The Telegraph's case this was M&S and Waitrose - naturellement) in order to get a bargain.  Blimey, shows how tight everyone's finances must be if even The Telegraph are featuring reduced food.  On the other hand, it just goes to show that chasing after supermarket bargains is quite the 'mot du jour' now and that maybe I've been a bit ahead of the trend all these years!!

Comments

[Many A Mickle]

I didn't know M&S reduced its nearly out of date food. I had a school friend who had the Mr Reducer role as part of his Saturday job at a supermarket. He took great delight in walking around the store, making it obvious what he was going to do, so that he'd have a trail of pensioners following him! His idea of sport!

[frugalcountrylife]

We found the same when our local Somerfield closed down.. hardly any bargains to be had at all!

[ilona]

I am a stalker, usually at Tesco. I went last night and my fridge is full of food that went out of date yesterday. I will eat it untill it is gone, perhaps up to one week later. It won't kill me. I hate paying full price for anything.