The first time I’d ever visited London was back in 2008, when an extended layover granted me a full day in that city. That whistle stop turned into a whirlwind tour, 24 straight hours of sprinting through Westminster during a freezing December, trying to cram in as many sights as possible. This year, when the traveling circus gave me the opportunity to go back to London with my family in tow, the one thing I didn’t want to do there was rush. We booked an Air BnB on the edge of the city for a solid two weeks, using the Southbank neighborhood of Bermondsey as our launchpad for adventure. And after the trip had ended, once we’d viewed the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and St. Paul’s Cathedral, it was only then that I realized my favorite attraction had been right across the street from our apartment:
The Tesco Metro supermarket.
As any traveling family will tell you, the most important thing you’ll need to find in any new place, even before you bother unpacking your suitcases, is the nearest supermarket. A family with kids would go broke trying to eat out at a London pub every night, you know? And invariably, you’re going to need some of those essentials you left behind at home. Nobody ever packs paper towels or dishwasher pods when they go on vacation. And you know what, heaven forbid that your kids might actually want to eat a piece of fruit every so often. But as it turned out, through some miracle of guesthouse scheduling, our little shoebox of a vacation home was located right across the street from a Tesco Metro.
That busy little grocery store was a lifeline for us. It was our first stop every morning to grab a picnic lunch and cold drinks, and our last stop at night to pick up dinner after a long day of exploration. Want to eat like a local while you’re in London? Forget about pub grub— pick up a Sainsbury’s oven-ready cottage pie instead. From household staples to fresh fruit and veg, the Tesco Metro Bermondsey had it all… even an epic beer aisle!
This particular Tesco seemed to serve as a hub for the Bermondsey community, a food oasis for every resident in a four-block radius. Shopping here granted us a rare glimpse of the real London, a diverse city made up of people from all races, creeds and colors. We watched recent Chinese immigrants stumbling through the checkout process in their broken English, aided patiently by a Bangladeshi cashier who looked fresh off the boat but who spoke with a thick Cockney accent. The Tesco was a place where harried commuters wearing their wireless Airpod headphones bustled past us on all sides, automatically avoiding my kids as they jammed up the candy aisle. Truly, this store offered something for every taste.
But as much as this Tesco Metro supermarket might have seemed idyllic to my foreign eyes— a retail Garden of Eden, perhaps— like the Bermondsey neighborhood itself, the place still had a few rough edges.
On our very first night in town, our family had popped round to the Tesco to load up on supplies. Inevitably we’d forgotten something—sandwich bags, I think— so after dinner I was dispatched back across the street to grab some. In the few hours that we’d been away, all of the plate glass windows along the storefront had been shattered! The security guard posted up out front was politely turning away shoppers due to the store’s early closing, while at the same time letting a few locals slip inside if they “just needed to pick up a few things.” As he told the story, “some nutter with a hammer” had come along and busted up the Tesco for no apparent reason, along with a few other stores in the neighborhood.
Criminal activity notwithstanding, my family kept right on making daily grocery runs at “our” Tesco Metro, plywood boards be damned. Our vacation had fallen on an interesting time, when the United Kingdom was swearing in a new Prime Minister and the upcoming Brexit process was dominating the news cycle. And even after we’d departed London for our next adventure, leaving that country’s domestic politics behind to work themselves out, I couldn’t help wondering what the future might hold for our neighborhood supermarket.
Would decreased imports result in a nationwide shortage of kidney pudding?
Might desperate city dwellers take to hoarding their black market supplies of bangers and mash?
Or could gangs of crazed “nutters” return, armed with hammers, seeking to vent their frustrations at the state of England’s economy?
Whatever the future might hold for Great Britain as a country, I’ve got nothing but good wishes for all of my Bermondsey neighbors… and for their supermarket as well. It’s like Pope John Paul II might have said, “As goes the Tesco Metro… so goes the nation.”