Wearing a mask in the supermarket helps me hide my unhealthy habits

When various supermarkets announced this week that customers not wearing masks would be banned, I was taken by surprise. I had assumed that such a prohibition was already in place.

A fortnight ago a man in the vegetable aisle at Waitrose had a very loose bandana around his face, which regularly slipped to expose not only his nose but his mouth too. That was enough to get a very hard stare from me. I hoped staff would boot him out, as they had a young lad who’d wandered in maskless a week or two before Christmas.

True, there are some who feel it’s all too much: not only the strange people who think the whole pandemic is a charade or conspiracy; but also those who simply aren’t convinced by the science around mask-wearing, or who find face-coverings intolerably uncomfortable. Really though, for all that masks make communication more difficult, there is little else that more explicitly sums up our communal effort to do whatever it takes (and perhaps more) to combat Covid-19. I’m here all day for them.

In any case, when it comes to the weekly supermarket shop, masks have additional benefits, especially if your buying habits have become as unhealthy as mine have since last March.

Back in those early days, when tins of tomatoes were available neither on the shelves nor under the counter, and when loo paper was soft and strong, but long gone, I tried not to panic – yet invariably came home with lentils and tins of soup. But as stocks were replenished, and as lengthy queues dwindled, I found my visits to the supermarket falling into a new pattern.

My regular day was Thursday; still is, in fact. I would go after work, usually at about 6.15pm, when I found the big supermarket in town to be especially quiet. A lot of goods I bought were the same each time: juice, yoghurts, bread, butter, cereal, pasta – the staples, more or less. There would usually be some fruit, but not a lot as I would do a run to the greengrocer’s stall on the market on Saturday morning. Likewise, fresh meat and fish would come from the market fishmonger or the local butcher.

The meat I might buy from the supermarket was more processed: minced beef for bolognese sauce, or frankfurters for the kids. I’d usually pick up a pizza, sometimes two, and although I was making a lot of bread, the children still wanted the packet variety, so a sliced loaf always made its way into the trolley.

And then there were the real treats. When life felt so strained and the tension of home-schooling was at its peak, the call for chocolate was loud; almost as loud as that for sweets. But not nearly as loud as the desperate cry for crisps. By the time I reached the wine section, the noise was a cacophony.

The result was that by the time I reached the checkout, I looked like a man who had done Supermarket Sweep in an off-license, thrown in some largely unhealthy crap from the newsagents next door, before absent-mindedly chucking in a banana for health right at the last second. On at least two occasions the cashier made pointed references to the apparently good time I was planning.

But of course, as my goods are bleep through, and I stand there masked and usually hatted, I am comforted by the thought that my gluttony remains utterly anonymous. The shop staff might, I suppose, recognise me by my favourite brand of salt and vinegar crisp or my penchant for sherry, but my identity remains a mystery. I’m like a superhero; but one who mainly watches University Challenge, and eats peanuts and Haribo.

As if this wasn’t reason enough to keep a mask well-secured, imagine my joy earlier this month to be asked for proof of age because the lady at the check-out couldn’t tell how old I was. Despite being covered up, my astonished expression evidently showed, as I spluttered that I was 41. I was not, in the event, asked to show my driving license.

Needless to say, I left the shop feeling disproportionately flattered, and rushed home to tell my wife I’d been ID’d for the first time since the occasion I bought a kitchen knife in John Lewis at the age of 26. I may be greying under my hat and have wrinkles beneath my mask, but in these strange times, take any ego boost you can get.