Lidl and Aldi are great. There, I said it. They are the Ryanairs of supermarkets but without the abusive staff and hidden charges. You’ll even find them close to town centres not a two hour train journey away.

I began visiting Lidl a couple of years back for a very valid reason: I was told to. Back then they were doing the haul out a pallet of stuff, drop it on the floor and let the scavengers pick it to the boards thing. A lot of the food was gank then too. Russian tinned meats and Russian dog food - if it weren’t for the pictures on them you couldn’t tell the difference.

But things have changed. The displays are neatly stacked out. They now stock a lot of Irish and UK made produce - meaning you can read the labels. Fluency in 17 languages is no longer a prerequisite. The staff are friendly, not that they weren’t before. If something’s shite, return it, no problem, sir, here’s your 23c refund. Imagine telling Ryanair that flight was shite, take me back home. It, and you, wouldn’t fly.

Besides the prices, what I like most about Lidl is the big wide aisles. Fifteen fat brides could reach the alter simultaneously. Big aisles are essential if you suffer from trolley rage like me. Even if the fifteen fat brides dumped their trolleys and buggered off for a quickie with the bestmen, I would still have room to navigate my way around the store.

These days, certain products draw me back to Lidl again and again. The German beers and the cooked meats. Fairtrade coffee and chocolate. They do a great value loo roll branded Aloe Vera that is just class. Aloe Vera as in the plant not Coronation Street. Scented, soft and strong, yet half the price of the stuff either the puppy or the bear make.

For goods like that Lidl can’t be beaten. But a word of caution: I also keep an unlist - what not to buy.

Socks. Don’t buy them. Your toes will go straight through the first time you throw a kick at the cat.

Jocks. Never again. I got a four pack for €3 and can’t wear them. A bit like the village of Sallins in my parents’ day - no ballroom. And they tend to drift into the middle and get eaten by your arse. Very uncomfortable.

Cornflakes. Yeuch! It took me a month to get through a 500g pack of tiny pieces of cardboard. No, it wasn’t a jigsaw I bought.

Dog food. Even the flies turned up their tentacles at it.

Toothpaste. Tastes like paste. What kind, I don’t know.

Bread. Not all. Some. Stayed fresh for ages. Too long, in fact. Obviously so packed with preservatives there wasn’t room for flour.

What do you like/dislike from the Lidl range? Chat away among yourselves, I have to go do the shopping.

In the way villagers always do, we refer to one shop as the shop. Others are named the little shop, the new shop, the far shop etc. depending on their circumstances and the mood of the residents. Owners spend fortunes on fancy signs advertising their businesses as The Village Stores, F.J. Mooney’s Newsagents and The Corner Shop but to no avail. They are the shop, the new shop and the far shop respectively.

Similarly, doing the shopping means going to Tesco or Superquinn. Going to the shop means buying the paper, bread and milk. Always milk. Sometimes a few other bits and pieces. Soup-on-a-rope, boil-in-the-bucket rice, see-through-cheese slices. Stuff like that, but never more than 6 items in total. They have one check-out signed more than 6 items only. It’s for tourists, blow-ins and people who screwed up doing the shopping in Tesco.

So how do they make their money? Simple. The delicatessens. Deli’s are gold mines. Three or four pieces of pig, a sliced bread roll, 0.001 Watts of electricity, minimum wage for the server and 10 microns of butter: 25 cents maybe. Sold for €4.50. And who are the customers? Building workers and tradesmen.

Now the problem is tradesmen have vans. Tradesmen eat in their vans. Tradesmen eat in their vans in shop carparks. Tradesmen then take a nap, in their vans, in shop carparks. Matty Keane who pops in for the paper and milk (always milk remember) after dropping the little Keanes to school can’t park. He goes home angry, drinks red tea, rereads yesterday’s paper and kicks the dog up the arse like he was bishop Brennan.

No-one wants dogs being kicked up the arse. Bishops are fair game, but not dogs. So the ISPCA approached the managers, Shop Jimmy, Shop Alan and Shop Frank, and warned that if something wasn’t done things could escalate. Cats could end up being kicked. (I’m okay with that myself, but apparently the ISPCA isn’t). Cute little fluffy bunny rabbits could be kicked.

The first idea was to have a 15minute parking limit. But this wasn’t feasible. How would Mrs. Kiely have time to collect her pension, get something for the dinner, buy the paper and milk (always milk) without tearing around the shop so fast that she’d wear the rubber tip off her walking stick?

Installing a height restriction barrier wouldn’t work either. The tradesmens’ business was just too lucrative to lose. And anyway, Mrs. Kiely is afraid of driving under those things since the time she tried to put the car in the garage with the door not fully open.

It’s 8 months now since Matty Keane first kicked the dog and there’s been no resolution yet. The poor dog spends his days with his arse to the wall like a fly-half who accidentally strays into the Emerald Warriors’ showers.

So I’m putting it up to you guys now. I need suggestions. Until we get this sorted the talk in the village will never again be about politics, global warming or world hunger. Not that it ever was, but you know what I mean. We don’t even discuss the weather anymore. And that’s serious. And I’m low on milk. So help us please!

As someone who suffers from trolley-rage I was overjoyed when my local Little Britain introduced self service checkouts. It would at least halve the time I’d have to spend grocery shopping.

My joy was short lived. Like the mayfly. Or is that the mayflower? Or McFly? Anyway, it started out great. No queues. No-one asking if I had a Clubcard. Had I a parking receipt. Did I know what terrible weather we were having. If I’d fancy a quick shag under the till. No. All I had to do was grab the goods, scan them, drop them in my shopping bag, feed the machine a few euro and go. Easy in - easy out.

Then it all went terribly wrong. Other people have started using my checkouts. The cheek of them! I wouldn’t mind if they could actually use them, but most can’t. And because they can’t, there are queues now.

I have had to develop a totally new algorithm for choosing which queue to join. The old one for regular checkouts had pretty straightforward selection criteria: Number of people in each queue; number of items per person; was the checkout girl worth checking out. That kind of thing. Empty queue - go there. Queue with a number of people but only a few items each - go there. One person in queue with trolley contents spilling out - avoid like the Tánaiste. All queues with a number of people with full trolleys - goto Dunnes.

Now there are extra things to look out for:

Has the shopper in front got loose fruit or veg? Avoid. Some will wave a turnip over and back across the scanner 2.39 million times before realising it isn’t barcoded. (What’s a barcode?) Others will try to tell the machine what the item is. “T-u-r-n-u-p”. [sic.] More will place the turnip on the scanner and stare at it. Then bounce it off the glass.

Has the person using the checkout still got their shopping bag in their hand? Avoid. They are placing everything loosely in the bagging area and will have to pack it later. That’s the bagging area signed Bagging Area, with little arms you hang a bag on to keep it open while you drop in each item when you’ve scanned it.

Is the person in front a large Nigerian lady? Avoid. All large Nigerian ladies need 30 minutes to wait for a bus due in 5. They run walk saunter in slow motion. Lee Majors without the che che che che che che. If you have no option but to queue behind them, ask a passerby to fetch you some razors. You may be scruffy looking by the second day.

If the person in front is a large Nigerian lady, with a shopping bag on her arm and a basket of turnips …

I’ve just been down to my un-local shop for the paper. Normally I go to my local shop, which is closer of course, but sometimes a change is as good as a rest. And sometimes not.

The advantage of going to the un-local shop is I get to see what the rest of the neighbours are up to. The disadvantage is the change.

The female half of the proprietorship is a grade A cent-pincher (that’s penny-pincher in old money). I mean it. If it weren’t for her husband the crows flying over the shop would be carrying packed lunches.

Today in my change I got a 2¢ coin instead of a 5¢. On the last visit I got four 10’s instead of five (and an apology for not being able to give me a 50¢ piece. Ah’ve no faftas, saurey). And then there’s the old reliables - the foreign coins. Croatian lipas, Kazakhstani tiyn, Zambian ngwee. Ok, I’m lying. It is usually East European or Sterling. But where does she get them? You’d never see Polish folks in there and the few Brits you do see are few and far between. I mean, does she send away for them? They can’t all come from customers because she scrutinises every last note and coin handed in. And how does she produce them every time? Does she have a separate compartment in the till labeled ‘dodgy junk’?

The big question is how do I get caught every time even though I watch like a hawk? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the constant blather or simple sleight of hand.

But I’ll catch her eventually. Great. Now I’ve something to live for.