So yesterday morning found me and younger daughter in Primrose Hill. The smuggest of all of smug North London. The ponciest of the poncy, the twee-est of the twee, where you won’t find a high street name among the shops, you won’t find an oik (apart from a few Gallaghers, and they’re rich oiks) and its way too posh for Starbucks. I would say ‘it’s charming’ but that’s only what they’d like to hear. So after our inevitable coffee and muffin (honey, cinnamon and banana, if you care, rather yummy, we shared both it and the guilt and it only cost £26.97 with macchiato frotho oat-almond-vegan-2-shot-extra-skimmed-flat-lattes) we strolled over to Camden. 5 minutes away but a different world. Out with the ‘Kensington Casual’ look of Primmy Hill and over to the gothic grunge/punk drug-addict look of Chalk Farm. Where, once you’ve stepped over a few tramps and drunks, you find…

Amazon Fresh.

The supermarket. And we went in!!! It’s been there a while but I’d never gone in before. Like, through the door and… inside. Where there’s a barrier. Access is only by app or by getting your account up on your phone, then it says ‘Hello Rachel’ (probably unless you have a different name) and opens up the door to a new world.

Which, if I’m honest, is pretty much like the old world. In all but one very interesting difference. There’s no ‘check out’ facility. No tills, no ‘do-it-yourself’ machines, no scanning of what you take as you go along, no nuffink. Just… stuff to buy. But how do you buy it? And that is the ‘billion dollar question’. Not my billion dollars but Jeff Bezos’s, obviously. Once you’ve ‘checked in’ you just cruise round, grab what you want and walk out with it. Need a bag? Paper ones are free, others cost a quid. Or just stuff everything in your pockets, they don’t care. Just walk away; you’re done.

They’ve managed to take all the pleasure out of shoplifting in one store.

Because 5 minutes later they email you an invoice. Bastards. But interestingly the goods they sell are very very reasonable. Less than Waitrose, overall, I reckon, but I’m neither the world’s best nor careful shopper, it has to be noted. A fresh-baked almond croissant for 95p????? Amazing.

But I can’t work out how they do it. So I’ll say ‘algorithms’. Modern day explanation for anything inexplicable. Magic.

Worth checking out. Great pun.

Happy Sunday. I hate rain.

A xxxx