They’ve opened up a Planet Organic on Essex Road. I went in there yesterday to see what was going on.

There was some free food on offer, a dry crumbly bread-like substance, but I’m too suspicious to comfortably take free stuff (“there must be a catch…”) so I gave it a miss.

While I was in the shop my boss called and I ended up having a phone conversation about quantitative user research while hanging around near some organically-farmed fish. What a cliché.

Modern retail design is science rather than an art, and companies like Planet Organic know what they’re doing. As predictable as one of Pavlov’s dogs, I ended up with a fairly full shopping basket.

While in the store the idea of making tacos had somehow entered my mind and this led to me fumbling for things like tortillas, tomato puree and crushed chillis. I even bought a yellow fin tuna steak. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with this.

When I got to the till I smiled wryly at a sign for the staff saying, “People are already trying to pay with counterfeit £50 notes – please look out”. Obviously the clash of cultures that became inevitable when Planet Organic decided to open a branch on Essex Road was already in full swing.

As my purchases were clocked up, the totals seemed a bit different from the prices on the items. Then I realised, they operate an American system of displaying prices without VAT, meaning that everything was in fact 17.5% more expensive than I’d originally thought. At that point I started wishing that I had some counterfeit £50 notes!