Thursday, December 30/2010

Supermarkets are a great deal closer to their famers' market origins. Thus Prinos, the greengrocer's - which runs to things other than fruit and veg - sells rabbit, skinned and all but whole and with the head still on, covered with cling wrap but looking entirely too much like what it is - a small animal curled up in sleep position. And across the road at Carrefour, the international French supermarket a bird of some description (we can't tell from the Greek) retains not only large talons, grasping for a last chance at life, but a small rather flattened red head. Not only off-putting but remarkably poor value, these bits, for the five euros plus per kilo that's fair enough for the meatier parts.

There's a feistier attitude on the part of the customers as well. So in Prinos I meet an old man grinning as he walks down an aisle with a slice of bread and several pieces of sausage in his hand - more or less an unassembled sandwich. Looking for the source of his lunch, I find it on the deli counter. He's simply taken a large piece of bread and a few of the bigger chunks of meat from the free sample plate. J later sees a woman at the same plate taking handfuls for the child with her, scorning the toothpicks provided and scrabbling through the offerings. And in Carrefour an old woman in black is energetically bashing the stem part off a large bunch of broccoli, leaving herself with only the flower ends for heer euro a kilo. Seeing my eyebrows creeping upwards she laughs gleefully. I tell J that I'm surprised she had the strength to break such a large stem, but he says that she whammed it against the edge of the bin with practised skill - she's done this before!