"If you can afford tattoos

 you can afford food." 

The owner of a local supermarket chain is saying this as shoplifting is apparently increasing. He has been vocal, rightly so, about people coming in and simply helping themselves.

I have recently had to go through the exercise of working out more exactly just how much money I need to spend on food in order to eat sensibly but without luxuries.

"You could spend less on bread," I was told. No, I buy good bread because good wholegrain bread is more satisfying than cheap sliced white. I buy two litre containers of milk because two one litre containers would cost more. (It would also add to the environmental impact.) It is actually less expensive overall. I know these things and shop accordingly. 

I think I know how to shop. I simply do not know what is in the packaged meals section of the freezer department. I am fortunate in that I can still make my own meals from scratch. Middle Cat's late MIL taught me some Cypriot tricks to add to what my paternal grandmother taught me. I am grateful. I do not need to shop lift in order to eat.

But are people really that short of money that they need to steal? I suspect the really desperate people go to Foodbank and hope they might get something to feed their children. They don't resort to shop lifting. 

The supermarket owner was saying that what is being stolen are not so much the smaller, everyday essentials but the more expensive cuts of meat. I suspect that meals from the freezer department are going too. After all it is easier to "heat something up" than it is to steal a packet of pasta and a bottle of pasta sauce and do something with that. 

And I also suspect the supermarket owner is right when he says that at least some of these people have chosen to have a tattoo - or perhaps a packet of cigarettes, a six pack of beer or a lottery ticket - before feeding their families. Some of them will also be selling what they have taken - selling it so they can get some of the better protected "luxuries". 

Yesterday one of the people on my bicycling route stopped me and asked if I would like some pumpkin. She lives alone and a very large pumpkin has accidentally grown in her garden. Rather than pull it out she has left it there and was now offering me some of the result of doing so.

I said, "Yes please." What she gave me is more than I can use alone and I am not that fond of litres of pumpkin soup. I still accepted it because I then rang Middle Cat and told her not to cut the one in her garden as she was planning this coming weekend. I will pass some of it on to her tomorrow and give the friend coming to lunch today some more. We will all benefit. We know how to make food from raw ingredients and we won't need to steal in order to eat...and none of us have tattoos instead of bread.