Brexit at a London grocery store

My return to Italy is postponed by a few days so I find myself in the dairy section of the Waitrose in Crouch End, London. I am not at peace with the world, to put it mildly. I’ve had a traumatic day, am feeling very shaky after having an allergic reaction to something I ate the day before, and I have exactly 16 minutes to shop for dinner before I need to be on a conference call with clients.

I am bending over looking on the bottom shelf to find lactose-free cheese, feeling dizzy, when a tiny, elderly woman, very elegantly dressed and with perfect makeup, approaches me and asks if I know the difference between evaporated and condensed milk. I tell her that I really don’t but would guess that condensed has more sugar.

She goes on to say that her only living family member is her son who now lives in Singapore and that he has been calling her almost every day demanding that she stocks up on supplies for Brexit. She says that during the war she remembers her mother hoarding condensed or evaporated milk, but she can’t remember which.

There is nothing else in her small basket. She’s looks blankly around at the packed shelves, clearly overwhelmed. Then she asks me if she needs to be this worried. I stammer that it probably doesn’t hurt because things are so unpredictable.

Then I tell her I have to go and turn to the register with a huge lump in my throat cursing myself for not being up to the challenge, untimely conference calls, and Brexit.