It's the supermarket 'Rictus' day...

Christmas Eve...

This is the day when tradition demands that we visit as many supermarkets as we can, and count the number of customers with a manic fixed grin on their faces!

If you study the Rictus Day syndrome - as we used to in years past, you were able to arrive in the car park and spot the four-by-four being furiously parked, and most of a family of a mother and three children would spill out. The mum was already gesticulating to the children to stay close by. The Rictus is about to kick in, but not quite yet...

On entering the supermarket - we'll make it a Waitrose, but it could be anywhere, except for some of the cheapo budget shops - the grin begins to appear on the mum's face, especially as she can't find her loyalty card to unlock the zapper which is just by the door. A small queue builds up, and a man at the back begins to mutter!

After snatching the zapper from its cradle, (always on the bottom row for some reason), the grin develops into anguished, teeth-baring desperation, as the shopping list is right at the bottom of the voluminous handbag, and the queue for the coffee machine watches with interest as the various contents are spread all over the empty shopping trolley. The list is discovered tucked into another purse the size of a Pears Cyclopaedia.

The Rictus has now extended to the neck muscles, where it will remain for the rest of the shopping extravaganza, and while the children happily inspect all the chocolate stacked up by the first aisle, the quest for comestibles becomes a murderous race rather like the chariot scene in Ben Hur, which by coincidence also has Charlton Heston riding with possibly the first rictus grin ever shown on the wide screen, but there again, he didn't have to brave the fury of Waitrose customers!

So we pass the fruit and vegetable aisle, taking an armful of any salad stuff with a yellow ticket, and the hunt for Manchego and Comte cheese begins in earnest. The various decibels of 'NO NO NO' are heard by other shoppers by the bread shelves as the group passes the pizzas, and the next aisle becomes bereft of Kalamata Olives and Miso Paste. 

The grin is now beginning to attract the attention of the staff manning the CCTV cameras, as the trolley enters the final phase of the expedition with a wild-eyed, gasping grimace extending to the carefully knotted Prada scarf, and also now affecting the hands, which have developed claw-like characteristics as the eye-brows contract to a fair Clarke Gable impression, but with additional French accents, and word goes out to the floor staff to check her trolley 'as a precaution'!

That final dash to the self-checkout till ends in a shuddering crash, and the monster bag of crisps, thoughtfully added by one of the children, splits open to the vocal equivalent of the Rictus, which is a sort of strangled shriek, combined with steam-train sound effects!

The scramble is over as the bank card whistles past the machine, and the Rictus is still maintained right up to the door, when there's a momentary lapse, and the shoulder blades start to droop!

That's until the trek back to the four-by-four is categorised as 'Rictus Extra-Violent', when it is discovered that they've forgotten the Tamarind paste...