Like a lot of autistic people, I don’t find the supermarket to be the most optimal environment, to put it mildly. It’s like some dastardly Looney Tunes villain twiddled their moustache and said ‘Let’s list a load of things that stress autistic people out, then shove them all into one building, you know, for a laugh.’ (The Looney Tunes villain I’m imagining has a Lancashire accent for some reason.)

Our local supermarket is notorious for having an incessant computerised voice-over on the tannoy system. Tannoy Lady helpfully lets you know which tills have opened and closed, and frequently reminds you to download the shop’s rewards app. She frequently bellows her observations and orders across the store, yet I’m pretty sure no one has noticed that she still thanks customers for social distancing. Perhaps the neurotypical regulars simply do not hear what she says anymore, having filtered her out a long time ago.

Me on the other hand, I hear everything she says, every time I’m there. At this point, I am her closest confidant, and I don’t even like her very much.

There’s a smaller shop closer to us which has multiple self-service checkouts that narrate your customer experience, overlapping each other as they do it, serving you extreme irritation in surround sound.

‘Have you swiped your member’s card?’

        ‘Thank you, card acknowledged.’

   ‘Press for a receipt.’

                               ‘Please take your shopping.’

The self-service checkout sisters seem to dislike awkward silence, filling the air with inane phrases at high volumes. They are reminiscent of younger relatives at a family party trying to show you, the ‘cool auntie’, how to make loom bands. Stop talking about how you made a Taylor Swift inspired friendship bracelet, Courtney, I’m trying to buy a tin of baked beans.

When I’m talking, and I can hear other people talking at the same time, my speech jams. I’ve written about this before in this newsletter, but essentially it means that, for example, when I buy my lunch using the self-service checkout, it is pretty much impossible to carry on a conversation with the person I went to buy lunch with, because all I can hear are the checkout sisters. For whatever reason, this means I can’t get my own words from my brain and out of my mouth (see also trying to make eye contact and speak to someone at the same time, impossible for me.)

It’s not just the noise that makes a shop a hellhole. There’s the usual fluorescent light nightmare that supermarkets must receive some sort of bulk discount for or government subsidy (I don’t know how else to explain their love for using them). Our corner shop recently had them installed and while I admit it made the pokey place look a lot bigger, I can feel the horrible light searing into my eyeballs whenever I walk in to buy some M&Ms.

The visual information at these places is too much. Supermarkets are a whirl of:

• colours - I’m one of those neurodivergents who finds themselves feeling nauseous when they’ve looked at certain patterns or colour combinations. When you feel sea sick at the sight of a multipack of Monster Munch, maybe consider an autism assessment.

• voices - chatter in general irks me (see above), but nothing is worse than little kids wailing at nothing. How do the parents just ignore it? I’m really sorry for you, small child, and perhaps your mummy will give you back your iPad soon, but I can’t filter out your screaming, so it’s just there, front and centre of my perception, and weirdly I feel literal pain when you scream. Please would you consider stopping if we shoppers clubbed together to buy you a new iPad?

• temperatures - when I used to do the shopping with my nan back in the day, we used to go to M&S (ideas above her station given that she was proudly a self-described graduate of the ‘School of Hard-Knocks’). I don’t know whether it’s to distract you from their prices, or to wave a posh fist at the spectre of climate change, but M&S fridges are bitingly, unnecessarily cold. I have many childhood memories of sullenly following Nan around with our trolley, with the ends of my sleeves pulled over my hands, and my teeth chattering, while she considered which overpriced ready meals to buy (Reader, it was always the same ones, if you get my drift).

• smells - Around that time in my life, I remember running the gauntlet at the bargain store with my school cardigan pulled around my face while my mum looked around the cleaning products aisle.

Yep, it ain’t my fave place. And I haven’t even touched on the social anxiety of it all.

But a person’s gotta eat, and I can’t afford to Deliveroo all my meals (as much as I like to dream).

So I go. And over the years I have learned coping strategies for visits to the supermarket.

• Wear Loops or ear defenders if you can.

• It helps when you stick to one or two supermarkets maximum, so you can really familiarise yourself with the layout of the shops. Building mental pictures of places gives me a sense of predictability.

• You can get to know the times when the shop is so busy that you might as well not bother if you want your sanity to remain intact. Sunday mornings are good round here, but these times might differ from place to place for all I know.

• Prepare your list beforehand and stick to it. Make a battle plan. Don’t get distracted (your ADHD brain might think the Middle at Lidl is wonderful, but it’s not worth it!).

Thanks for reading. We’re nearly at 1,000 Wavy people here. Say hello in the comments!

Take it easy,

Ren