The Blackberry Walk

Costco was always a wonderful day out when I was a child. I remember fondly walking down each aisle with my parents and my younger brother, looking at the vaulted frames carrying plastic-wrapped crates to the roof of the building. It was an enormous place, and even bigger when I was small. Much like the image of Costco which appears in Idiocracy, it looked to the young me. We travelled every aisle, my brother and I nagging my parents for certain goodies, like at the pastries section, as we went; and, for being so well behaved, on the way out we got Costco pizza. For those who haven't had the pleasure, Costco pizza slices are a sixth of an 18-incher, and the highlight of any visit to Costco. A trip would be incomplete without a slice. It was why Costco was such a fun day out. Many rosy memories there from the past. But over the Christmas break, I returned to Costco with my parents to help with some shopping, and saw the wholesaler with more mature eyes. Eyes which have had new experiences independent of my family, of university, of the world of work; eyes which have seen a different area of the country and different ways of life. Eyes which have read books, and which have looked inwards and introspected about the world, how it is, and how it ought to be. And through these new eyes, Costco wasn't all that I had remembered. The shop was so much busier than I had remembered. Trolleys pushed and shoved into aisles - and these are big trolleys, mind - whilst shoppers took off the shelves all manner of jumbo-sized items. There was a real callousness in the air, as if everyone were invisible to everyone else, each person on their own mission. Few browse in Costco: everyone knows exactly what they are after and beeline straight for it. It's utilitarian in that way. They serve good quality foodstuffs, like their beef which is top-notch - foods which are often better quality than can be found in the supermarkets - but you walk around, and there's something very soulless to the place. There's a kind of trajectory which can be drawn. We've gone past the butchers, then past Tesco, then past Aldi/Lidl and their slimmed down experience, to Costco where we take out produce straight from the warehouse it's stored in. All is stripped away so far that there is no personal connection left, no experience of shopping to speak of. These complaints can easily be levelled against supermarkets also. They aren't guilt-free by any means, chopping and gutting the high street of butchers and fishmongers; but the supermarkets are still in the cities, and typically are accessible by foot. Something about Costco feels alien by virtue of its distance, like a cube of commerce plonked in a large field with an adjoining car park. The supermarkets have people about, stocking shelves, working, who you can ask for help on where something is. It's friendlier. Costco has nothing like that, no one to help you in the vaulted labyrinth. No people nor community, nor even the facsimile of community which the supermarkets attempt. Costco knows it isn't a supermarket, and that it's a large warehouse, so any pretension otherwise would be nonsensical. Costco is a new way of shopping wholly unlike the old one which saw its start in peddlers of yore. And one which is becoming ever more popular. Recently in particular I've heard many people in the office talk about getting Costco memberships. Though many of them are late to the party: many South Asian families have been shopping there for some time. Whenever there's a holiday like Diwali, out come the Costco treats scattered across the office desks. My own recent experience of Costco aligns with this quite strongly. The area of my childhood Costco, just outside of London, has a large South Asian population no doubt, but inside the Costco one could go a little while without seeing a white face. Please understand, in bringing up demography my aim isn't to start saying that oh these immigrants are colluding to break down high streets, traditional butchers, and grocers. Because I don't think what's key here is being foreign, but rather it's being an immigrant. Neither of my parents were born in England, and despite both of them coming from Anglophone cultures I too was brought up in that Costco-culture. There is such a thing as the immigrant mindset, you will no doubt know. There's a kind of graft to starting a new life, a will to push on forwards, to make something of yourself and provide for your children, firmly setting down roots in a new land for their prosperity. That's the positive side, the light side to the immigrant mindset; but there's also a dark side. The dark side is that to leave the country of your birth and start a new life, you are unlikely to have had such a strong connection to the land and the culture. Granted, there are times when leaving is unavoidable, like in times of political unrest and famine, but likely the immigrant was able to up sticks and leave because he never felt all too tied down in the first place. India is a good example. I've heard a few first generation immigrants from India say this now, that the rigid family structure and constant nagging from family and in-laws got too much, and that's why they wanted to leave. It could be Western ideas through media, and an interest in a more Western way of life. But whether or not this is the case, it requires a certain kind of mind hardened against nostalgia and patriotism to reject the culture of one's up-bringing and want to find a new life. The immigrant mindset and the Costco mindset are quite similar, I contend. Both look to utility over and above human connection, looking to find the quickest route rather than the most scenic. On the light side of the immigrant mindset, Costco is a place to save money by buying in bulk. "Always buy in bulk", has always been a motto of my father, one which he'd be quite disappointed to find hasn't sprouted in me. You can save a lot of money by doing this, by buying in bulk: but what do you lose? You lose the human touch, the beauty of the high street, and the tradition and rootedness it brings. And here we find that darker side, the sacrifice of tradition. It is a kind of Faustian bargain, whereby you are able to retain more money at the expense of something far more ineffable... something like the soul of the community. Soul in Latin is anima: the soul is what animates. And there is something quite soulless in Costco. I saw big blocks of Munster cheese for sale, and I remembered buying some Munster cheese from a small independent shop run by a husband and wife on the high street where I live, as I've written about before. I've been back to that shop a few times since. The last time I was there, I had the man working at the counter shave off half-a-dozen different salamis for me to make up a present. I remember feeling a little guilty making him slice up so many for me, but he didn't mind a bit. We chatted a bit while he worked. But I remember it. I remember the experience clearly, and the man who I chatted with, even though it was half a year ago now. Should I have picked up a block of cheese at Costco would I have any memory of it at all? The fewer memories we make, the quicker time passes, and the sooner we die: this is the conclusion I've come to. Novel experiences, personable experiences, meeting people, making relations, exploring new things, all of these slow down our perceived passage of time. Memories form our psychic punctuation and give structure to our past. Without them, life becomes a little more hollow, a little more empty. A little more like a Costco, large, empty, with each interaction as forgettable as the last, like shades in the Fields of Asphodel.