27 Nov Marks and Spencer, Edinburgh, Scotland

At Marks and Spencer on Princes St we went into the food hall. We bought dinner from here, because for the next few days we’ll be eating out. It was a big supermarket with a small stall selling miso soup with noodles, which was a bit random, burgers, paninis (panini rolls with filling) and sandwiches. At their bakery they had sweet pastries, croissants, normal bread, commercially baked bread and breads like brioche Irish bread and Irish potato bread. They had a huge selection of meals that were ready to heat. The rows were organised into different cuisines and also by meat type. They also had salads and soups. We bought a pack of 8 mini hot cross buns (₤1.09), a pack of 9 small, organic gingerbread men, two packets of chicken pieces (2 for ₤5 [one for ₤4]. One lime and coriander, one tomato and basil), a salmon en croute (₤3.49), two boxes of hoisin duck with noodles, beansprouts and mangosteen (2 for ₤6 [one for ₤4]), pilau rice, chicken masala, chicken korma and prawn crackers. The Indian food and prawn crackers were part of a special deal that came to ₤6. We only got prawn crackers because there was no more naan and prawn crackers were the only things they were allowed to substitute. Because we couldn’t find the naan at first, we were just going to get an Indian meal pack which had two meat curries, a veggie curry, naan, pilau rice for ₤8.

For some reason mum and dad decided to use the self-serve checkout, then halfway through decided to ask about the naan and what they could substitute if they didn’t have any. When we were told we could get prawn crackers instead, they had to run to get the rice and curries. When we scanned them the discount didn’t come up, so a store person had to help us. He said that the curry they picked up wasn’t part of the special deal so they had to go find the specially marked packs. We stood at the checkout for at least 10 minutes. M&S also has small stores attached to petrol stations. I suppose they’d have much better food than the usually petrol station fare. A2 cooked her salmon en croute in the oven. As she opened the door to add my chicken in later, the smoke alarm went off. It was strange because there was no smoke and the pastry wasn’t burnt. It stopped beeping after a while, although it did interrupt mum’s shower. We didn’t know there was an exhaust fan, but mum eventually found the switch.