the little circles our lives go round in

Picture me last week. I'm pacing the home baking aisle of Morrisons (née Safeways), and there are no meringue nests in sight.* The flan bases, pre-cooked pie shells, trifle sponges and other summer pudding bits are also missing. I have searched the store three times. Are they perhaps on special somewhere, in a huge display that I couldn't see for tripping over it, because it's now strawberry season?

Odd: because this entire neighbourhood is pulsing with Sunday lunches, garden parties and spoilt kids, though of course it's possible they no longer want to eat anything that isn't sold in the Farmer's Market. (n.b., Fresh & Wild doesn't sell meringues either.)

I ask a rather hulking young man in a grey tunic. He looks earnestly up and down the shelves for a moment and then turns to me, abashed: "Um... can you tell me what type of product it is?"

I explain that it is an entire family of products - though he doesn't understand "bases for summer puddings," either - that is missing. I try to describe what the packaging looks like. I tell him meringues are made of sugar and egg whites.

Ho looks so vague I know he has no earthly notion what I am talking about, but he goes to "check the warehouse" and comes back with the sad news that they are not there. But they will be in on Monday.

Cut to Tuesday this week. I have spent two days off sick. I'm only in Morrisons because I have nothing left to eat and have no choice. I feel, as the saying goes, like shit; I'm craving some sugar to get me home, but even in the sweet aisle it's all chocolate, which of course has fat in it. I return to the meringue-and-flan-case section, but it's no better than last week.

This is strange: my friend the Cat Lady has only just been on the phone complaining that she bought some meringues over the weekend and her kids have eaten them (if the cats had eaten them she'd think they were adorable little darlings), and I know she goes to Morrisons. Everybody does. I did ask her if shed thought of telling the kids they were only for her, or else buying twice as many, but she hadn't.

So there I am. I'm not prepared to spend yet another half an hour trailing through the entire shop looking for a summer puddings display that I know, deep down, I won't find. I don't dare ask another young person because I know he will have been brought up by some slut who never made nice things for her kids - or maybe by a superwoman who never uses shopbought pudding bases - either way, there will be no point. I seek out the manager. I stand by the information desk for fifteen minutes waiting for him, and when he arrives he is wearing a pink shirt which is reassuringly different from the grey tunics of the people who don't know the products.

He's called Steve. He looks as if he lives in Essex, and has bright blue eyes. I tell Steve my story.

"Ah," he says, cheerfully. "There's a funny thing there, it's complicated." I like him! It's complicated!

"I knew it was!" I say eagerly. "Because it's not just the meringues, it's the flan bases and the pre-cooked pie - "

"and the trifle sponges," Steve says.

"Yes," I say. "And it's strawberry season!"

Steve tells me that a while ago they had a directive from the main company telling them to de-merchandise that stuff from the home baking section -

"De-merchandise it?" I say.

"Yes, and to re-merchandise it from another section."

I look at him expectantly. "...which is...?"

"Well, the other section doesn't exist," he says. "So consequently, unfortunately, nobody's placed the order..."

Of course the other section doesn't exist. How could it?

"But it's strawberry season!" I tell him. "I even thought it might all be in a big summer pudding display somewhere."

I can't tell from Steve's face whether he has thought of this angle before; it is convincing though, isn't it! He tells me there may just still be some out back; he'll go check. I cultivate a taste for slightly old meringues as I stand there waiting, but when he arrives his hands are empty. He leads me through the shop, though, to show me the exact stand where the meringues (etc) are going to be on display when they do arrive. He says, "It's too late today, but I tell you what I'll do, I'll do the order myself, tomorrow morning." He's riffling through a clipboard. "That's Tuesday. They should arrive sometime on Wednesday, so we'll have them on display by Thursday, that's day after tomorrow. See this? We'll use this whole stand, I get what you're saying, see these packets of custard powder here?"

I love Steve. I like his style. I'm also grateful to him for the whole story about de-merchandising, which is frankly better than Morrisons meringues. So I'm tired but happy. I thank him excessively for his trouble (and his pink shirt) and then I say, "Listen, Steve, while I've got you here - there's another thing I've always wanted to talk to somebody about, it's like a little dream of mine, if I ever got the manager's ear - you know, Ben and Jerry's do this amazing chocolate fudge brownie frozen yogurt, it tastes exactly like the ice cream but it has only 2.3g of fat per 100g!"

Steve's eyes light up. "Really?"

"Yes," I say to him. "It's frozen yogurt, But it tastes just like the ice cream!"

"Ohhh," he says happily. "I'll look into that..."

I say to him, "I can tell you right now that if you stock it half of my friends will buy it."**


* Regular readers will already be aware of how large meringues can loom in to a foodie person, with a sweet tooth, on a no-fat diet.

** I mean me and the Cat Lady, of course; we will buy enough for half of Stoke Newington.