In the atrium, OK, the arrival lounge, no, the lobby, I don’t know, that bit inside the supermarket but not inside the shopping area proper… is an information board which announces (top left) that you can meet our suppliers. I would guess that this is a typical display in such shops which tells people about sources of local products, normally cheeses, eggs, meats and other things.
However in our area things are different. The suppliers and the products are one and the same – we are the producers of ourselves and our consumers too. Cannibals no less and nothing wrong with that in a consumer society.
So, to the right of the projected local suppliers and the explanatory map of their locations in the district we see, not fish farms or Christmas cakes suppliers, no sausages nor ale but charities, good works, supporters and protectors of the community. Our local suppliers are supplying a dense mix of relations, prepared to a local recipe and made from local ingredients: us.
The texts that are carried in this information section refer to the ‘local suppliers’ that Tesco would like us to get to know. However what we read about are a charity shop on the adjacent high street, a childcare centre, information about local courses and a variety of other good works carried out locally by and for local residents. My intention is not to demean any of these providers but just to point out that in an area such as ours, one high on the deprivation index, we are promoted (by ourselves and by Tesco) as suppliers of services to the needy and the needy themselves.
