Friday shopping for food is becoming less attractive. The Stock Road markets are still on the list, but the local Woolworths and Cole’s supermarkets have been dropping their bundles. The Woolies operation at Melville have decided that mid morning on Friday is the best time to partially block the aisles of all the refrigerated sections in order to restock the shelves. The sausage section is the worst, this is closely followed by the cheese and smallgoods section. The prices are no help. They are always high. Fresh meat from four legged creatures like pigs, sheep and cows has become particularly expensive at Woolworths. However, they usually do a special on chicken thighs in the deli section on Fridays. They were $3.29 a kg yesterday.

We bought a whole rump of beef from The Mad Butcher. It’s the front-name for a meat packing operation which has an association with Galati family at the The Potato Shed south of Fremantle. They are big time veggie growers. Another branch of the Galati clan is working at the Stock Road Markets. All these setups seem to be thriving because they easily compete with the big supermarket chains. They’re also expanding. Recently a Potato Shed opened at Wanneroo, north of Perth.

The Mad Butcher has been mentioned by me before. They initially had a small operation in Spearwood, but have been so successful they recently moved into a much larger premises in O’Connor, just a short distance from the Woolworth store. The retail shop at the front is obviously an appendage to the wholesale operation out the back. Importantly, it’s more conveniently located for us.


An Italian stereotype?

The young guy who served me yesterday said he’d been saving his money to finance a one year trip to Thailand in May. He was going to join a kick-boxing school. I wished him luck and hoped he didn’t get too badly injured by the Thais.

Later in the day I walked to the local Coles supermarket - it’s two minutes from our house. I needed some cockroach baits. The store has gone pretty limp and lacks the variety found in Woolies. In addition most of the advertised weekly specials were long gone. There was a time when Coles could be relied upon to carry enough stock to meet the demand for advertised specials through the entire week. I’ve never understood why they risk alienating customers by running out. It also raised suspicions of bait advertising, which is supposed to be illegal. Meat was very expensive at Coles too. No worries, we already had our rump steak from The Mad Butcher for $5.99 a kg. We’ll slice it up today.

Interestingly the boss cocky of the huge Wesfarmers/Coles empire got egg on his face last week when he started waxing enthusiastically that private enterprise could do a better job of running the type of holiday accommodation we enjoy so much at Rottnest Island. As minor shareholders in Wesfarmers, we reckon he needs to pull his head in and take a hard look at what is going on in his own corporate backyard - especially the flaccid local Coles store. Rottnest is doing quite okay as it is.

Some exterior all-weather rat baits which I set along the fence lines of our place a couple of weeks ago have been doing their job. I bought another packet of baits this week to deliver a coup de grace. On Thursday night I was in the back garden and could smell the gentle pong of dead rats. The waxy baits have a hole in the middle and can simply be slipped over a long nail. The brand name is ‘Tomcat’. I found them at Bunnings, which is also part of the Wesfarmers/Coles empire.


A gnawed rat bait amongst the grape vines

© MMX Paul R. Weaver.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally.  An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!