Damn him! Damn him to fuck and buggeration. It’s bad enough that he even has the piss to enter my territory in the first place, but he’s always there THE VERY SECOND I ARRIVE, already poised over the shelf like a traumatized baby vulture. Luckily, this week we both turned up before the harbinger did. As I strode in with indignant vigor, walking at the fastest possible pace without running, in order to look purposeful but not quite rapist-like, I spied him as I came round the corner. He was there, wandering away from the meat counter with his floppy monkey brow and his prolapsed granny-flange lips. How dare you, I thought. You may be hideous but that doesn’t give you the right to hog all the hideous things. Bastard. I have already gone over in my head what I would say to him if we ever found ourselves engaged in a verbal dispute. “Oh yeah? Well how many mouths have you got to feed? Have you got a wife and three children? And five dying grandparents? And a brother with a mental condition who only eats furniture so I have to buy him chairs and tables to eat but the others don’t eat chairs and tables so they’re relegated to the other seventh of the budget that’s left for scraps of bread and stains of milk and the mucus that collects on the mouthpieces of public telephones? Who do YOU need to feed? Your own waste of fat and organs, you cunt.”
Of course, all of this would have been fabricated. I do in fact have no one else to feed but my own waste of fat and organs but THAT’S NOT THE POINT. I was here first. So fuck him. Anyway.
In the absence of the harbinger, there is seldom much else to do but walk in circles (rectangles, technically) pretending to be observing the produce, periodically returning to the reduction site every X minutes. The art of versimilitude becomes choresome in such circumstances. Browsing through the vegetable section, picking up three peppers and trying to maintain an expression that says “Hmmm… two pound fifty for three peppers just because they’re organic. Well that seems reasonable but I’d better stand here looking pensive while I… WHERE’S SHITARSE?” Still nowhere. Good, good. I may have time to wander up to the far end of the building where they have the miscellaneous reductions. It’s crap, generally. A 10kg sack of dry dog food, reduced by 2% because they had to fasten it up with duct tape. 5p off of a can of coke. Why? A flimsy plastic bag containing 4 individual packets of skips. WHY? It’s the same price as 4 individual packets of skips! Nappies! What the fuck do I want with nappies? And who the fuck buys damaged nappies anyway? Mind you I suppose they’re only for catching shit. And why…
CRAP! Shitarse!
I thunder down the aisle towards the frozen section, legs pounding like a piledriver, kicking myself with each thrust, thinking “Why? Why must my attention span be so… oo, croissants….”
“NOOOOOO!!!” To my horror, there they were. The Harbinger was practically placing the reductions directly into Shitarse’s basket which was by now heaving with the long-coveted ambrosia of the meat reductions. “Bastard bastard bastard!” It’s quite tricky trying to look nochalant when your every muscle wants to go on a viking berserker rampage, bludgeoning everyone to death with a shopping basket. But needs must. The shitehawk is a lowly creature of the shadows and so it must remain. I appeared behind them and in sequence I turned each storey of my body towards the shelves, as if to say “Oh hark, there appear to be some reductions. What luck. I’ll just… nestle myself between you there and examine this… oh I’m not getting in your way am I? I’ll just pick up these three items, these four… these six items and I’ll just examine them here, well I’ll tell you what, for now I’ll put them in my basket, assume they’re kosher and start gathering a few more items for examination, you don’t mind do you? Excuse me. Oh sorry was that your face?” I didn’t say any of this of course (I remained mute as I must) but that roughly sums up the baffling contest between desparation and concentrated awkwardness that went on.
I ended up with a few sandwiches. Shitarse lumbered away with enough frozen meat to dress up in a ballgown and sexually intrigue a sperm whale. Did he look happy? Did he so much as grin smugly? That I could have handled. But no, he just kept hobbling on, as droopy and miserable as ever. What a joyless cretin. At least I’m grateful when I win. I get a little spring in my step, swing the shoulders a bit, I even cock a swaggering eye towards my haul as I pass people. “Check it out - Big basket of cheap meat. Bet you wish you were me!”
I must defeat him next time. I must take everything there is, even if it’s more than I need. Even if it’s more than I can physically fit into my freezer. I’d rather see it rot in the bin than let that fucking flap dangler get hold of it. I must eat it all and shit it out right under his nose. Maybe then he’ll crack. Maybe then he’ll change his expression, maybe to something even more miserable. Maybe I can make him so miserable that his sweaty little rubber face completely melts away, and his whole pasty little blob of a body collapses like a dogshit souffle and there’s just this mess on the floor, this mess of human jelly and I kick him. I kick him and bits of lardy foam get scattered across the supermarket and they hit children in the face and the children laugh because they don’t realise they’re covered in globs of melted fat bastard. And then they’ll realise, they’ll cry to their parents “Wah! I’m covered in globs of melted fat bastard!” And the parents will say “This is outrageous! We came here to purchase goods, not get pelted in the face with the liquidised remains of an already disreputable character! We demand retribution!” and they’d blow up the whole city with bombs they planted during the cold war and everybody would die.
That’ll show him.

“Damn you! Bitch! Fucking cuntbag, I hope you die! I hope you have a stroke on the way out of here, so I can kick you in the good half of your face. I hope you get alzheimer’s and you spend the rest of your days re-living your most traumatic memories. You twat.”
These are the things that went through my mind. Don’t think less of me for this. I am a shitehawk. I am already helplessly detached from any moral code, and the instincts I must draw from in order to survive are not those of man but of beast. Do not judge me, unless you too have drudged across the same dank forest floor as I, slithered through this fallen foliage of disarray in search of putrid carrion. You don’t know me! Shut up.

The point is, luckily for me, these other shitehawks have remained sparse in occupancy, each turning up only once and leaving most weeks free for me to forage alone.
… Until now.
I have met a fair few bad people in my life, many of whom have caused me no end of internal struggle, yet never have I encountered a creature loathsome enough to call my nemesis.
… Until now.
Three weeks in a row he has been there, skulking around the meat with his basket. You’ve never seen such an ugly animal. A saggy, fat, bald little fuck, devoid of any expression other than that of a thousand smacked asses. He walks like a goblin and he is a truly abominable bastard. Somehow he knows when the harbinger will approach. He is without scruples. Without batting an eyelid, he greedily shovels up every item on the shelf and piles them into his basket. Who does he think he is? I mean who does that? Every fucking item, hoarded. Here’s me, bereft. Nothing. Not even so much as a pot to piss in. Not even a fucking… sausage roll. Oh how I hate him. I want to stick cutlery in his kidneys. I want to hang him by his bollocks with cheese-wire. I want to gouge out his eyes and lay eggs in his brain.
I have come to the conclusion that this is the work of a notorious entity known as “Shitarse.” The legend of Shitarse is known only to me and my closest friends, first appearing as a computerised opponent in a playstation game. This guise was defeated and subsequently was reincarnated as a mouse that shat all over our kitchen. We battled with that accursed mouse for eons. Eons I say! In time, it too was slain, but I shan’t regale anyone with the tale of its demise. The details are too depraved and gruesome even for my ears. The following year, Shitarse was reincarnated again as a medium sized black dog that I came across in East Hull. It was a pathetic and harmless mongrel, yet its mission was clear: It was determined to utterly destroy me for no reason. But all it succeeded in was pissing me off (This guise later became the inspiration for a certain cartoon character on this site.)
I feel certain that Shitarse has now taken on a humanoid vessel, in the form of this fat little shitehawk. Not since that genocidal dog has anything in this world oozed such bilious hate. But this time, his weapon is not a scattering of dried crap, nor a set of ankle-seeking teeth. This time, his weapon is far more targeted and sinister. He is depriving me of the commodity I hold dearest of all - cheapness. He is stealing my dreams, and if I am to take them back, I must step my game up. Commence operation “DESTROY SHITARSE OR AT LEAST STOP HIM FROM SHITEHAWKING IN MY TERRITORY OK AT LEAST GET BETTER AT SHITEHAWKING SO THAT I’M NOT SO PISSED OFF WITH THE FAT GUY AND WANT TO DIG THE FRECKLES OUT OF MY SKIN.”

The inside of my mouth smells bad.

“Two bags of murray mints for the price of one?! This will surely satiate my nutritional need for murray mints!”

“Half price pig intestines? Lemme at ‘em!”

Then there’s the “reduced for quick sale” shelf - The dark wing of the refridgerated section where food goes to die. We’ve all found ourselves in its presence, saying to ourselves “These foods are not the same foods as each other. They are different foods. They are not lined up in uniformed rows and they are shoddily emblazened with several layers of day-glo stickers proclaiming the dwindling laudability of this food’s existence. This food does not smile at me. This food looks sad. It tries to smile but it is too ashamed and disappointed with life.”
In the past, I have been more than happy to happen upon this shelf. I find it refreshing to catch a glimpse of what life would be like in a country where goods are almost reasonably priced. But it was not until I moved to London and became unemployed that I realised the full potential of the reduced shelf. It’s not just a shelf. It is a way of life…

At eight thirty on Monday evening as I was returning from a business engagement (OK a band practice) I said to myself “I might as well nip into Sainsbury’s on the way home.” (I realise now that I probably shouldn’t have said this out loud. They say narrating your own life is one of the “signs.”) So I scouted around the bottom shelves of Sainsbury’s for the usual economy leftovers, and I was traversing the frozen meat aisle on my way to get beans when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a sticker. The stickers in question are half white and half yellow, adorning a reduced price crudely scrawled with a biro. By this point I had already trained my eyes to spot them from a distance, a lot like a hawk spies a wounded rat as it meanders from a pile of garbage looking for a place to die. I could see that the sticker was on a medium sized turkey, and so assumed that it would be reduced to maybe three or four pounds (still way outside my price range.) But as the price came into focus I could scarcely believe what I saw… 29p.
The phrase “Words cannot express it” is often paradoxically introduced to sentences these days, but in this case it is largely applicable. A truly intense and life-changing feeling rushed through my body at this point. A sudden realisation that there is hope out there for a befuddled pauper such as I in this godforsaken swampland. 29p! An entire turkey hasn’t been that cheap since the dark ages! Wait… it’s NEVER been that cheap! Retrospectively, those few seconds may have been among the most content moments I have ever known. At the time it didn’t seem at all deep or cathartic but more like the euphoric, crystalizing revelation one experiences the first time one discovers masturbation. Suddenly the possibilities are endless. The world is my oyster - My sweaty, foul-smelling, rapidly decaying oyster. My CHEAP oyster.
I cooked the turkey twice to stave off the salmonella, and I tore the carcass asunder with my bare hands and wolfed it down like a starving barbarian. When I look down on myself I expect to feel utter disdain for the beast I have become, but instead I feel only pride. I have discovered how to eat a king’s feast for the price of a peasant’s scraps. The world seems brighter and less heavy.