Tesco Quotes

And I was pretty sure this was how love felt: fuzzy and scary and confusing and light enough to whisk you away like a Tesco’s bag on the wind.

My mam always used to tell me that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And Eddie from Tesco is a fly, but he's got a taste for vinegar. It's like vinegar is all he's ever had from people, and now he doesn't even know what honey tastes like.

Books are precious things and cannot be selected like tinned peas in Tesco.

Then he reached to an even higher shelf and brought down another plastic grocery bag, this one from Tesco, which is decidedly less upscale. “Now, a smell is going to hit you when I open this up, but don’t worry,” he said. “It’s just the smoke they used to preserve the head.” That’s a phrase you don’t hear too often, so it took a moment for it to sink in.

Trust a bloody angel to take four sentences and two Biblical references to say, ‘bugger me, isn’t there a lot of choice at Tesco.

...relationships only ever end up in one place....Tescos!

But in a fit of inspiration he’d fashioned a balaclava from a Tesco carrier bag – the handles tied beneath his chin.

Are you treating the Cosmos like Argos or Tesco Direct ordering what you want and waiting for delivery? Are you ever satisfied?

It's like this, Bunny Boy, if you walk up to an oak tree or a bloody elm or something - you know, one of those big bastards - one with a thick, heavy trunk with giant roots that grow deep in the soil and great branches that are covered in leaves, right, and you walk up to it and give the tree a shake, well, what happens?' (...) 'I really don't know, Dad,' (...) 'Well, nothing bloody happens, of course!' (...) 'You can stand there shaking it till the cows come home and all that will happen is your arms will get tired. Right?' (...) 'Right, Dad,' he says. (...) 'But if you go up to a skinny, dry, fucked-up little tree, with a withered trunk and a few leaves clinging on for dear life, and you put your hands around it and shake the shit out of it - as we say in the trade - those bloody leaves will come flying off! Yeah?' 'OK, Dad,' says the boy (...) 'Now, the big oak tree is the rich bastard, right, and the skinny tree is the poor cunt who hasn't got any money. Are you with me?' Bunny Junior nods. 'Now, that sounds easier than it actually is, Bunny Boy. Do you want to know why?' 'OK, Dad.' 'Because every fucking bastard and his dog has got hold of the little tree and is shaking it for all that it's worth - the government, the bloody landlord, the lottery they don't have a chance in hell of winning, the council, their bloody exes, their hundred snotty-nosed brats running around because they are too bloody stupid to exercise a bit of self-control, all the useless shit they see on TV, fucking Tesco, parking fines, insurance on this and insurance on that, the boozer, the fruit machines, the bookies - every bastard and his three-legged, one-eyed, pox-riden dog are shaking this little tree,' says Bunny, clamping his hands together and making like he is throttling someone. 'So what do you go and do, Dad?' says Bunny Junior. 'Well, you've got to have something they think they need, you know, above all else.' 'And what's that, Dad?' 'Hope... you know... the dream. You've got to sell them the dream.

I don't know if you have ever tried to read Moby-Dick on a DS in a Tesco car park - I doubt you have - but I cannot recommend it. The two miniature screens, so in harmony with the escapades of Super Mario and Lego Batman, do not lend themselves to the study of this arcane, eldritch text; and nor does the constant clamor of a small boy in the back seat asking when he can have his DS back.

Maybe we should be looking at how we live, and how our minds weren’t made for the lives we lead. Human brains – in terms of cognition and emotion and consciousness – are essentially the same as they were at the time of Shakespeare or Jesus or Cleopatra or the Stone Age. They are not evolving with the pace of change. Neolithic humans never had to face emails or breaking news or pop-up ads or Iggy Azalea videos or a self-service checkout at a strip-lit Tesco Metro on a busy Saturday night. Maybe instead of worrying about upgrading technology and slowly allowing ourselves to be cyborgs we should have a little peek at how we could upgrade our ability to cope with all this change.

To his left is big Tesco, and walking through its glass doors he feels as if today things are possible, which yesterday, were unimaginable. Yesterday, he had thumped computer keys to send emails to apologise for the other emails he hadn't sent yet.

Instead, I went straight to Wines and Spirits and bought three big bottles of premium-brand vodka. I had only intended to purchase two bottles of Glen’s, but the promotional offer on Smirnoff was remarkable. Oh, Mr. Tesco, I simply cannot resist your marvelous bargains. As luck would have it, the

You guys used to walk through graveyards?” Iona asked, horrified. “It cut at least ten minutes off the walk to Tesco,” Harriet tried to reason. “I am so glad I go to Uni in the city,” Iona said, shaking her head. “A Tesco Metro on every second corner.” “And a Sainsbury’s Local on all the others,” Adam joked.

Will I drop dead while using my contactless credit card? Will it be Kyleee who witnesses my demise through her several layers of Tesco-brand make-up? Will she ring for an ambulance in the same dull monotone she employs when interacting with her customers? ‘You gonna pay or what?’ Kyleee says in a flat voice. ‘You’ve gorra wave it a bit closer.

Not exactly Vogue material, are you?’ ‘True,’ he says, nodding. It’s a bit sad that this is his default setting. My mam always used to tell me that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And Eddie from Tesco is a fly, but he’s got a taste for vinegar. It’s like vinegar is all he’s ever had from people, and now he doesn’t even know what honey tastes like.

23 January On the way home, a visit - forced - to Dean Street Tesco. What a dump this chain is. Reduced their staff as much possible in favour of shoppers checking their own food out, cabinets missing items, one variety of fruit and a 15 minute wait for one of the few attendants to go get a bottle of vodka. A must to avoid. A sort of shopping equivalent of our shoddy government.

The only criterion I have is that the books must look clean, which means that I have to disregard a lot of potential reading material in the charity shop. I don't use the library for the same reason, although obviously, in principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder. It's not you, libraries, it's me, as the popular saying goes. The thought of books passing through so many unwashed hands - people reading them in the bath, letting their dogs sit on them, picking their nose and wiping it on the pages. People eating cheesy crisps and then reading a few chapters without washing their hands first. I just can't. No, I look for books with one careful owner. The books in Tesco are nice and clean. I sometimes treat myself to a few tomes from there on payday.

It is very hard to explain to people that neither J. K. Rowling nor the women of Mumsnet – or, by extension, that middle-aged white woman who looked at you a bit funny in the queue at Tesco – are plotting mass murder when so many online voices respond to them as though they are. The misogyny directed at Rowling for what was a compassionate essay, advocating violence against no one, was off the scale.

However, what appears to be efficient to individual companies along the stream—for example, purchase of one of the world’s fastest canning machines, operating at fifteen hundred cans per minute, to yield the world’s lowest fill cost per can—may be far from efficient when indirect labor (for technical support), upstream and downstream inventories, handling charges, and storage costs are included. Indeed, this machine may be much more expensive than a smaller, simpler, slower one able to make just what the next firm down the stream needs (Tesco in this case) and to produce it immediately upon receipt of the order rather than shipping from a large inventory.

...what goes on inside believers is mysterious. So far as it can be guessed at - if for some reason you wanted to guess at it - it appears to be a kind of anxious pretending, a kind of continual, nervous resistance to reality. It looks as if, to a believer, things can never be allowed just to be what they are. They always have to be translated, moralised - given an unnecessary and rather sentimental extra meaning. A sunset can't just be part of the mixed magnificence and cruelty and indifference of the world; it has to be a blessing. A meal has to be a present you're grateful for, even if it came from Tesco and the ingredients cost you £7.38. Sex can't be the spectrum of experiences you get used to as an adult, from occasional earthquake through to mild companionable buzz; it has to be, oh dear oh dear, a special thing that happens when mummies and daddies love each other very much... Our fingers must be in our ears all the time - lalala, I can't hear you - just to keep out the plain sound of the real world. The funny thing is that to me it's exactly the other way around. In my experience, it's belief that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable. It's belief which demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending. Pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture.

In this country faith is absolute and universal. The choice, if there is a choice, is made at birth. Everyone believes. For these people, God is a near neighbour. I thought of Sundays at home when I was a child, buttoned up in an uncomfortable tweed jacket and forced to go to Sunday communion. I remember mouthing the hymns without really singing, peering between my fingers at the rest of the congregation when I was supposed to be praying, twisting in my seat during the sermon, aching with impatience for the whole boring ritual to be over. I can’t remember when I last went to church. I must have been since Mary and I were married but I can’t remember when. I don’t know anyone who does go to church now. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? I know I live amongst scientists and civil servants, and Mary’s friends are all bankers or economists, so perhaps we are not typical. You still see people coming out of church on Sunday morning, chatting on the steps, shaking hands with the vicar, as you drive past on your way to get the Sunday papers, relieved you are too old now to be told to go. But no one I know goes any more. We never talk about it. We never think about it. I cannot easily remember the words of the Lord’s Prayer. We have moved on from religion. Instead of going to church, which would never occur to us, Mary and I go to Tesco together on Sundays. At least, that is what we did when she still lived in London. We never have time to shop during the week and Saturdays are too busy. But on Sunday our local Tesco is just quiet enough to get round without being hit in the ankles all the time by other people’s shopping carts. We take our time wheeling the shopping cart around the vast cavern, goggling at the flatscreen TVs we cannot afford, occasionally tossing some minor luxury into the trolley that we can afford but not justify. I suppose shopping in Tesco on Sunday morning is in itself a sort of meditative experience: in some way a shared moment with the hundreds of other shoppers all wheeling their shopping carts, and a shared moment with Mary, come to that. Most of the people I see shopping on Sunday morning have that peaceful, dreamy expression on their faces that I know is on ours. That is our Sunday ritual. Now, I am in a different country, with a different woman by my side. But I feel as if I am in more than just a different country; I am in another world, a world where faith and prayer are instinctive and universal, where not to pray, not to be able to pray, is an affliction worse than blindness, where disconnection from God is worse than losing a limb.

Dear Lily Don't think me silly, but I forget what time you said. Are we meeting at two thirty? It's gone right from my head. Did you say Monday or Thursday? I have quite forgotten what day. Was it late lunch, or afternoon tea? Tell me, what did you say? I think I would like to do Tuesday. Let's go for a lovely lunch. Or, if you prefer we could even go early, and settle for brunch. A lovely Bistro or Cafe Bar, or maybe a country pub. I don't really mind that much, as long as we get some grub. Dear Maisie, Are you going crazy? We didn't set a date. You needed to check your diary. I think you are losing it, mate. But since you are free on Tuesday, and that day suits me fine. Could we meet, about twelve…ish? Its early I like to dine. You mentioned the pub, or Bistro, or some fancy Cafe Bar. Not sure I like the sound of that, and I'm not coming in the car. If the weather is bright and sunny, we could always dine al fresco. Failing that, we could just go get a cake and a cuppa in Tesco.

Take the famous slogan on the atheist bus in London … “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” … The word that offends against realism here is “enjoy.” I’m sorry—enjoy your life? Enjoy your life? I’m not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment. Enjoyment is lovely. Enjoyment is great. The more enjoyment the better. But enjoyment is one emotion … Only sometimes, when you’re being lucky, will you stand in a relationship to what’s happening to you where you’ll gaze at it with warm, approving satisfaction. The rest of the time, you’ll be busy feeling hope, boredom, curiosity, anxiety, irritation, fear, joy, bewilderment, hate, tenderness, despair, relief, exhaustion … This really is a bizarre category error. But not necessarily an innocent one … The implication of the bus slogan is that enjoyment would be your natural state if you weren’t being “worried” by us believer … Take away the malignant threat of God-talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure, under cloudless skies. What’s so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks? … Suppose, as the atheist bus goes by, that you are the fifty-something woman with the Tesco bags, trudging home to find out whether your dementing lover has smeared the walls of the flat with her own shit again. Yesterday when she did it, you hit her, and she mewled till her face was a mess of tears and mucus which you also had to clean up. The only thing that would ease the weight on your heart would be to tell the funniest, sharpest-tongued person you know about it: but that person no longer inhabits the creature who will meet you when you unlock the door. Respite care would help, but nothing will restore your sweetheart, your true love, your darling, your joy. Or suppose you’re that boy in the wheelchair, the one with the spasming corkscrew limbs and the funny-looking head. You’ve never been able to talk, but one of your hands has been enough under your control to tap out messages. Now the electrical storm in your nervous system is spreading there too, and your fingers tap more errors than readable words. Soon your narrow channel to the world will close altogether, and you’ll be left all alone in the hulk of your body. Research into the genetics of your disease may abolish it altogether in later generations, but it won’t rescue you. Or suppose you’re that skanky-looking woman in the doorway, the one with the rat’s nest of dreadlocks. Two days ago you skedaddled from rehab. The first couple of hits were great: your tolerance had gone right down, over two weeks of abstinence and square meals, and the rush of bliss was the way it used to be when you began. But now you’re back in the grind, and the news is trickling through you that you’ve fucked up big time. Always before you’ve had this story you tell yourself about getting clean, but now you see it isn’t true, now you know you haven’t the strength. Social services will be keeping your little boy. And in about half an hour you’ll be giving someone a blowjob for a fiver behind the bus station. Better drugs policy might help, but it won’t ease the need, and the shame over the need, and the need to wipe away the shame. So when the atheist bus comes by, and tells you that there’s probably no God so you should stop worrying and enjoy your life, the slogan is not just bitterly inappropriate in mood. What it means, if it’s true, is that anyone who isn’t enjoying themselves is entirely on their own. The three of you are, for instance; you’re all three locked in your unshareable situations, banged up for good in cells no other human being can enter. What the atheist bus says is: there’s no help coming … But let’s be clear about the emotional logic of the bus’s message. It amounts to a denial of hope or consolation, on any but the most chirpy, squeaky, bubble-gummy reading of the human situation. St Augustine called this kind of thing “cruel optimism” fifteen hundred years ago, and it’s still cruel.

Anything with the word 'Tesco' or 'Weight Watchers' on the label should be viewed with some suspicion.

that you had always felt to be safe before, it tended to leave a scar. ‘But you knew her sister, I believe?’ she pressed on. Diane looked puzzled. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ And she wasn’t lying either, Hillary thought instantly. She knew this type of witness. All her life, Diane Burgess had respected the law — she’d probably been taught it by her respectable working-class parents, and then had it reinforced by her school teachers, and would no doubt have drummed the same mindset into any children she may have had. Added to that, she was a genuinely timid soul, and they tended to avoid confrontation out of habit. More than anything else, she would be uncomfortable lying, especially to someone in authority. It was far easier for someone like this to simply tell the truth. It required less effort. Hillary would have bet her first pay cheque — when she got it — that this woman was going to answer anything and everything put to her as honestly and as simply as she could hope for. ‘You used to work at Tesco didn’t you? In the town?’ ‘Oh that was years ago.’ ‘But you used to serve Anne

What scares me about this,’ he said, ‘is that you know more about my customers in three months than I know in 30 years.’3 Clubcard was rolled out to all customers of Tesco

For a supposedly closed set, they seemed to be approaching Tesco-on-Christmas Eve numbers of people.

Herrick then had to prove the third part of his proposition—that a demand for wine from this region could be established in the UK market. Not surprisingly, convincing the key buyers in the specialty chains like Oddbins and Victoria Wines took longer than first thought. The 1993 vintage was small and somewhat experimental; it was really not until the 1994 vintage was available that the buyers became confident of the sustainability and quality of the James Herrick label. The big retailers Tesco and Sainsbury’s also bought the product as it began to establish a position at the then premium price point of £3.99 a bottle. The fundamental pieces of the core proposition were beginning to work.

A weak competitor may resort to dropping prices because it is the only available action for increasing its volume in the short term to stave off disaster. By the late 1970s, Tesco had been suffering because of their legacy of small, town-centre sites but succeeded in taking the industry by storm with their ‘check-out’ campaign. The whole UK retail market became price-driven for several years, before it swung once again towards a market orientation with the battle being fought on location, format and service.

Tesco’s Clubcard, which we shall discuss in more detail later, enabled Tesco to identify over 5000 customer needs segments with each receiving individually tailored price coupons via email. We

Consumers can now scan the code on the product when they are running low, and it will be ordered and delivered within hours to their home, completely side-lining all the tools and techniques of competing manufacturers who would wish to get the consumer to brand switch. Tesco’s Homeplus in South Korea also launched a campaign that engages shoppers to buy products using QR codes. Homeplus created virtual billboards of their store aisles in subway stations, allowing passengers to shop while they waited by scanning the products’ QR codes – the groceries being delivered when they arrived home. The goal of the campaign was to help Homeplus compete with the number-one retailer, E-MART, without increasing their store numbers. Since the launch, their online sales have increased 130%, making them the top online retailer in South Korea, and a close second offline.

Retail brands are just as vulnerable as product brands to a loss of trust based on, for example, a major product quality failure, but the stakes and risks are much higher. A brand such as Tesco Basics has annual sales of £1 billion, so the value that can be lost is huge. Equally, the brand is composed of hundreds of products manufactured by third parties, so the risks of a product quality failure are magnified. Retailers

Despite the recession in 2008, Tesco increased their advertising spend by 18.8% to $125 million, and they weren’t alone. Asda increased theirs by 52%, Sainsbury’s by 21.3% and Morrisons by 15%. But even with recessionary budget cuts from manufacturers, the retailers were still outspent by Unilever, who had an advertising budget of $235 million in 2008 (up $4.8 million from 2007) and Procter & Gamble (P&G), with an advertising budget of $231 million (down $25.5 million from 2007), but spread across many brands. In

a key part of their subsequent success was rooted in the insight that continuous improvement to the shopping experience rather than any one particular improvement had the potential to be a major competitive edge. Tesco’s improvements included their ‘One in front’ commitment to effectively abolish checkout line-ups, baby-changing and bottle-warming facilities, ATMs, escorted searches for product requests and priority parking for pregnant mums. It was not that one improvement was more successful than another; it was the relentless implementation of a never-ending stream of small improvements that steadily improved Tesco’s image relative to their competitors, who were left seemingly forever floundering in their wake. The scheme also got Tesco’s staff more engaged in service delivery and coming up with ideas for further improvements. ‘Every little helps’ helped Tesco attract over a million new shoppers in the period from 1990–1995.

Thanks to the success of private label strategies (see Chapter 9), five of the top eight FMCG manufacturers in the world are actually retailers; giants such as Unilever and Coca-Cola are no longer even in the top ten, their global sales dwarfed by products under the names of Wal-Mart (now the world’s largest FMCG manufacturer), Carrefour, Tesco, Aldi and Lidl. The

Tesco’s success depends on their ability to replace manufacturer brands with their brands, which they have already achieved on 50% of their product listings. Retailers want to own mindspace because that is where the higher profits lie. To

The benefit of the retailer master brand model is that $202 million is a colossal amount of advertising for one brand in the UK market, meaning the Tesco brand has terrific awareness and saliency in comparison to any product brand. Retailers

In addition to price and terms of payment, the retailer faces a number of non-price costs. All the actions from loading delivery trucks, unpacking cases, mixing the right assortment of SKUs, labelling prices and arranging displays add up to a significant part of the cost. Tesco now have 70% of their stock delivered in shelf-ready packaging that requires minimum effort from their staff. Choices made by the supplier will affect these costs. Separating

Tesco uses its data-collecting loyalty card (the Clubcard) to track which stores customers visit, what they buy, and how they pay. This information has helped Tesco tailor merchandise to local tastes and customize offerings at the individual level across a variety of store formats—from

Hoping to create a little prestige, some retailers develop and advertise premium clothes sub-brands. In 2006, Myer, one of Australia’s largest retailers, launched a fashion line by top designer Wayne Cooper, known as ‘Wayne by Wayne Cooper Collection’. In 2010, Tesco launched a high-end fashion range, F&F, following Asda, who have created the most successful retail clothing sub-brand, George, by well-known British designer George Davies, which is worth $1.6 billion and is being rolled out in Wal-Marts across North America.

Football is more than just a business. No one has their ashes scattered down the aisle at Tesco.

A report in the peer-reviewed journal Public Health Nutrition showed that the organisation accepted more than $4 million from food companies and industry associations, including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Hershey, Kellogg’s and Conagra.39 And this was just between 2011 and 2017. In addition, they had significant equity in UPF companies including more than a million dollars of stocks in PepsiCo, Nestlé and J.M. Smucker.40 Meanwhile, back across the Atlantic, Diabetes UK lists Boots, Tesco and Abbott as corporate partners.41 Cancer Research UK is funded by Compass, Roadchef, Slimming World, Tesco and Warburtons.42 The British Heart Foundation takes money from Tesco.43 The British Dietetic Association has Abbott, Danone and Quorn as its current strategic partners, with other food companies as supporters.44 The

Maybe we should be looking at how we live, and how our minds weren’t made for the lives we lead. Human brains—in terms of cognition and emotion and consciousness—are essentially the same as they were at the time of Shakespeare or Jesus or Cleopatra or the Stone Age. They are not evolving with the pace of change. Neolithic humans never had to face emails or breaking news or pop-up ads or Iggy Azalea videos or a self-service checkout at a strip-lit Tesco Metro on a busy Saturday night. Maybe instead of worrying about upgrading technology and slowly allowing ourselves to be cyborgs we should have a little peek at how we could upgrade our ability to cope with all this change.

Neve plonked the chicken down on the table, then stood there with arms folded. 'Give Max his presents, then I'll feed you,' she commanded. The Tesco's bag was handed over and Max pulled out two bottles of Cava (which Neve knew were in a two for five pounds promotion), a small box of Quality Street and a pair of Homer Simpson socks. 'My God, have you no shame?

I went upstairs in the late afternoon, but by the time I got to the kitchen another voice was summoning me down. Standing in the shop was a tall hipster with a beard and tweed cap, holding a Tesco bag full of books. A Tesco bag is an improvement on a Farmfoods bag in terms of the quality of books it is likely to contain, but only a marginal one, and the books in this particular case were indeed better but still stock of which I already had an abundance, so I rejected them, primarily because he kept calling me ‘Buddy.’ Till total £105 12 customers

He excavated a Tesco ready meal (mushroom risotto) from a lost corner in the freezer. It would do. Was that Christian acceptance or just laziness? It was a fine line.

Reader, pick any Brontë. Any one, doesn’t matter. What do you see? You see intelligence, you see an observer, you see distance, you don’t see beauty. Look at Maria Edgeworth, Mrs Gaskell. Look at Edith Wharton, she’s Henry James in a dress. Henry called Edith the Angel of Devastation, which is not exactly Top Score in the Feminine Charms department. Agatha Christie is a perfect match for Alastair Sim when he was playing Miss Fritton in the Tesco box-set of the old St Trinian’s. You can’t be beautiful and a writer, because to be a writer you have to be the one doing the looking; if

Tesco at the best of times is soulless – but it’s so much worse at 6 in the morning. It’s not as empty as I thought it would be. Who the fuck shops at 6 a.m.? e florescent lights flicker. e shelf upon shelf of coloured cans make my eyes go funny. Everything is hard and shiny and there’s so much fucking choice. Why do I have to choose from thirty kinds of granola? Do I want Country Crunch or Rude Health? Raisins and almonds or tropical? Goji berries and chia seeds or Strawberry Surprise? I’ll just buy the Tesco range – that’ll be easiest. No, wait, there’s Tesco finest*, Tesco Everyday Value and Tesco Free From. What can be so damn fine about granola? You eat it everyday and what could it be free from? It hasn’t got anything unhealthy in it! What could one possibly take out? Actually, we don’t need any fucking granola.

If Tesco wants to shrink costs and improve the reliability of the 85 percent of the value stream it does not directly control, it’s obvious that the upstream firms must collectively rethink their operating methods, and this is how Tesco and the Lean Enterprise Research Centre joined forces. While it is still in the early stages, the process of jointly conducting the analysis just described should gradually change Tesco, the bottler, the can maker, the cold roller, the hot roller, the smelter, and the bauxite miner from seven isolated adversaries into a team of collaborators, indeed into a lean enterprise.

the directors of the Tesco food-marketing business in South Korea set a goal to increase market share substantially and needed to find a creative way to do so. They looked at their customers and realized that their lives are so busy that it is actually quite stressful to find time to go to the store. So they decided to bring their store to the shoppers. They completely reframed the shopping experience by taking photos of the food aisles and putting up full-sized images in the subway stations. People can literally shop while they wait for the train, using their smartphones to buy items via photos of the QR codes and paying by credit card. The items are then delivered to them when they get home. This new approach to shopping boosted Tesco’s sales significantly.5

There's a Tesco on the sacred ground Where I pulled her knickers down While Judas took his measly brass And St. Anthony gazed in awe at Christ Down on Rain Street

Tony: Listen... I need to... Um... Say... I mean... I know we only met earlier... And I know I nearly set you on fire... And we're both going out with other people. Obviously that's quite tricky. But... Well... You are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on in my entire life. I saw you and my heart leapt. You make me want to change my life. To... participate. I know it's not possible and that you have a boyfriend and we're not compatible or whatever but... I just... I know it's stupid... But maybe just hear me out for a second and the. You can tell me I'm an idiot and we'll both go back in and pretend this never happened but... I want to travel the world with you. I want to bring the ice cold Amstel to your Greek shore. And sit in silence and sip with you. I want to go to Tesco's with you of a Sunday. Watch you sleep, scrub your back, suck your toes. I want to write crap poetry about you, lay my coat over puddles for you. I want to get drunk and bore my friends about you, I want them to phone up and moan about how little they see me because I'm spending so much time with you. I want to feel the tingle of our lips meeting, the lock of our eyes joining, the fizz of our fingertips touching. I want to touch your fat tummy and tell you you look gorgeous in maternity dresses, I want to stand next to you wide-eyed and hold my nose as we open that first used nappy, I want to watch you grow old and love you more and more each day. I want to fall in love with you. I think I could. And I think it would be good. And I want you to say yes. You might feel the same. Could you? Maybe?

Was this phone sex? Jeff hadn't had phone sex before, and the last place he wanted to try it out was in the body care aisle of the Trowbridge Tesco. That really wasn't a kink of his.

The high street had everything, too – a doctor’s surgery, an optician’s, a dentist, and a Tesco supermarket.

and boo hags. This log house and all the Lockridge land belonged to some Choctaws before Mr. Lockridge took it over. Tesco’s worried them Choctaws might still haunt the place.

Elias’s view of reality was distorted and that he actually believed he could talk his way out of the whole affair. He was trying to sell the court as he had sold FMC and Kerr-McGee. When the video stopped Elias’s testimony quickly deteriorated into the theater of the absurd. He rambled without prompting, his thoughts frequently disjointed and defiant. He maintained that the tank left AEI empty, and any statements attributed to him to the contrary were “fantasy.” He said the material trucked to Evergreen from AEI was actually Kerr-McGee material he had previously trucked to AEI to turn into fertilizer and not the cadmium-bearing FMC material. He blamed the workers for their own injuries. He called OSHA overzealous and said they found no violations. He blamed Bill Brugger for the Tesco American litigation. At every opportunity he elevated himself and his efforts to get AEI and Evergreen working, saying it took “fortitude.

The librarian looks up for a moment as he steps through the doors, and smiles. Aidan is greeted by silence. In his memories, this place was never silent. Obviously, it is a library . . . so it has always been quiet, but there had been that hum—of people shuffling about, of kids whispering to their mums, people flicking pages, moving chairs, wiggling around, coughing and snuffling too. Today, barely a sound. Someone tapping out a text on their phone. The librarian drumming away on that clunky old keyboard. Nothing else. Recently, he has spotted posters about saving Brent’s libraries stuck up on community boards: in Tesco; at the gym; even plastered near the Tube station, advertising cake sales, knitting clubs at the library, sit-ins, petitions. But it has never crossed his mind that Harrow Road Library needs saving. In his mind, it is popular, well loved, but now that he is here, his heart begins to sink . . . Maybe Harrow Road Library will be the next to go

I had twenty-four quid and seventeen pence left to my name. I’d have to see exactly how far that would get me in Tesco.

Imagine Tesco, but for illegal demon shit.

Books are precious things, and cannot be selected like tinned peas in Tesco.

Ten minutes is a luxury the day-labourer cannot afford: I should be waiting outside the metaphorical factory gates with my boots on, every morning. If I hadn't been playing truant in Tesco I could have been on my way to a remote industrial estate by now.

I look into his face, and watch it melt from my boy, to Eddie from Tesco, to Will, to Lesley, to Remy, all with glass embedded in their eyes, all blood-spattered and knotted together. A rat king of boys in the face of this stranger, who is struggling and frightened.

Nothing changed, in the aftermath of loss. Songs kept getting written. Books kept getting read. Wars didn’t stop. You saw a couple arguing by the trolleys at Tesco before getting in the car and slamming the door. Life renewed itself, over and over, without sympathy. Time surged on in its usual rhythms, those comings and goings, beginnings and ends, sensible progressions that fixed things in place, without a thought to the whistling in the woods on the outskirts of town. It began as a whistle, expelled from dry lips. Over the years it sharpened to a bright, continual note.

and for every year I age I see at least 3 new TESCOs “OPEN 2- 4 HOURS A DAY” which is a lie (cause they all shut @ 5 on Sunday).

Self-employed may mean no pension, sick or holiday pay but you are Your. Own. Boss! Have to get down to Tesco for when they put on the yellow stickers? Who do you need permission from? That’s right… YOU! You’re the BOSS!

Tesco Express.

Some kid was playing up and being a right twat in Tesco, so his dad gave him a smack. This German woman came over, tapped the dad on the shoulder and said, “In my country we don't smack our children.” He replied, “Well, in our country we don't gas our Jews.

After a while, those little things – the outward signs of a life being half-lived, of a life in flux – started to fade. I got used to the driving. I accepted that his clothes were gone. I stopped bursting into tears every time I smelled Old Spice. But I never, ever, let go of that dressing gown. I suspect it’s a sign of some kind of mental breakdown, so I keep it secret, tucked away in a Tesco carrier bag in my underwear drawer, only getting it out at night.

A giant gleaming Tesco supermarket had opened a few months previously, and, as is the way with these out-of-town monoliths, it exerted a gravitational pill that could be felt for many miles. Buy one get one free is, after all, hard to resist.