Groceries & Glocks - I'll Need A Bigger Cart

Ok so lets make up our shopping list for Walmart.

Cereal, check.

Eggs, check.

Bread, check.

Checked tablecloth, check.

Deli Meat, check.

Apples, check.

Armalite, check.

Onions, check.

Milk, chec........whoa !!! Back up a bit, buddy.

Armalite ? Surely Marmite or even Vegemite ? No ?

When we go to Walmart, which is usually once a week, I nearly always take my camera because as regulars will know, I just love taking photos of 'the people of Walmart' and in my local Sebring store, they rarely fail to turn up to entertain and amaze me.

I also rarely venture far from the grocery section or the electrical centre as little else really holds my interest - I like the electrical centre as it has 'things with plugs on the end of them' and I like the grocery section as this is where 'the people' lurk. I'm not sure how much of this is down to them never straying far from the food aisles or the fact that with them on board, the electric carts they use don't have the battery range to get them any further into the store !

But the other day I had more time to spare and so I ventured beyond the enticing boundaries of the electrical centre and found myself in bizarreworld. Well bizarre for a non American that is. Not that many aisles along from the toys section was a counter selling firearms of all shapes and sizes. Now as a seasoned American visitor (legal I might add), this store area was not unknown to me but it still made my camera finger twitch and when I spotted the firearms version of an Argos Catalogue, the finger couldn't stand it any longer.

I'm not sure what impressed me more...the catalogue title or the fact that it was in its 102nd incarnation. I was expecting a foreword by Wyatt Earp or Annie Oakley (better not be sexist here, eh love ?) or even Charlton 'NRA' Heston but of course his guns had finally been taken from him when the rest of his body went the way of his cold, dead hands.

Anyway the Revolutionary musket wouldn't fit into the coffin.

As this non St. James version of The Bible was sitting on a stand (I know what I mean !), I opened it up at random and sneaked another photo while the Walmart employee was attending to a nice teenage couple who were browsing for a sawn off shotgun. Both looked sort of nervous but this was probably due to the close proximity of the slightly bulbous girl's father who was doing most of the talking and given the colour of his face and the definition of the veins in his neck, either drank a lot or had a slight issue with his blood pressure, or both.

I think Sainsburys should sell guns. I can see the LS17 moms in their top of the range SUVs packing heat on the school run. And think of the Nectar Points !!

It all brought back happy memories of my very first visit to these shores in 1989 when I went into my very first gun store in South West Florida. The owner was kind enough to let me handle many of the guns and even produced a case containing his personal .44 Magnum which I can tell you was neither a tasty chocolate coated ice cream or a large bottle of bubbly. Oh no this was a Clint Eastwood special and handling the owner's impressive weapon was something I'll never forget.

Judging by his demeanour, I don't believe he felt the same way. He's never written !

But enough John Inman smut and back to Walmart. I looked through the catalogue but found nothing I wanted - which wasn't surprising considering it's not my idea of fun to shoot at anything that has a heartbeat. Mind you, I can think of a few people I'd exclude from that general category and it would be quite easy to get them all at once as they are the ones who have been piling onto the 'sexist' Sky Sports bandwagon over the last week.

Oh don't get me started..........

Right, before my blood pressure joins that of the father of the bride, I'll get off.

Happy trails.