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The Third Circle of Hell - Iceland

Cerberus guards the gluttons in the third circle of hell, where they lie in the mud and consume their own excrement. By these standards maybe Iceland isn't so bad but the desire to stock up on emergency dinners can rapidly turn into a nightmare.

While the rest of the world becomes increasingly concerned with healthy eating and organic food, Iceland stands proudly by its special offers on I-Can't-Believe-Actual-Meat-is-Involved Burgers. My local Iceland dedicates about the same amount of space to fresh fruit and vegetables as it does to garlic bread with cheese. I would like to think this is because there's a huge fruit and vegetable market just outside, but peering at other people's trolleys reveals that in fact people would rather buy frozen carrots than deal with the complexities of the real thing.

A brief browse of the non-frozen shelves is reminds you of all the things you need/want to buy, but doesn't actually provide the opportunity to do it thanks to the spectacularly limited offerings. Teabags can only be bought in packs of 700, while cheese can only be bought in wafer thin quantities. Pickle isn't made by Branston and the only baked beans available come with pineapple and salami. No matter what you're after the only way to buy it in Iceland is either to buy too much, too little, the wrong brand or slightly the wrong flavour. Each time you approach a section you're greeted by an empty section of shelf right where the item you are searching for should be located. In desperation you find yourself shoulder deep reaching to the back to the shelf hoping to find a little lost tin and hoping not to lose fingers to the Economy Monster that lurks back there generating endless supplies of 7p baked bean tins.

You promise yourself you'll go to Somerfield as well (a whole different issue) to buy proper food and vow that you're just stocking up on frozen pizzas for emergency meals. You're not really planning to live off frozen, microwavable pizzas for the next 2 weeks. Just in case of emergencies. Emergencies like it being dinner time and your flatmates refusing to feed you again.

You stare at the special offers in bemusement. The pictures on the packets look nice enough, but you know in your heart that the steaming burgers on the package that look like they've come straight off a barbecue will turn out to be eerily identical, regimentally round and flavourless (at best) meat patties that make you crave more salad in your burger. You ponder the "All this for just 5pounds" meal and actually start putting it into your basket before you remember that a) you don't like prawns at the best of times and Iceland frozen ones are not likely to fall anywhere near 'best' and that b) in order to actually convert it all in to a meal you'd actually need 3 ovens all at different temperatures and a schedule system with no room for 'it looks a bit pasty still'.

You manage to resist most of the special offers on things you don't actually want and have filled your basket with pizzas, fishfingers and a gateaux of some sort for a treat. Then you have to join the queue for the till, the single till, because only one is open. In front of you is a woman with 3 screaming children and a trolley overflowing with bags of frozen processed items. You wonder vaguely whether she has some sort of refrigerated cellar to place all these items in or whether the family only actually eats once a fortnight, cooking and consuming everything in one day-long session before everything defrosts.

You quietly watch your purchases defrost until they finally open another till. At which point the person behind you jumps in front of you. You then have to wait as they're informed they can get a second Utterly Totally Mostly Cholesterol for free, so the little bell has to be rung to summon a runner to go on a quest for the fast route to heart disease. Everyone stands around trying not to make eye contact with each other until the unfortunate soul at the bottom of the career ladder returns victoriously holding the tub aloft as if he's found the holy grail.

Meanwhile the lady who lives in an igloo has requested home delivery and so is bickering with a manager about the address and when it can be expected. They proceed to bag everything up in individual plastic bags thereby simultaneously impacting not only the health of the nation but also punching the environment in the nose as well. Eskimo lady departs leaving a mound of bags on the checkout conveyor, a slightly overwhelmed runner and a queue of people wondering how easy it would be to appropriate random extra bags.

You finally manage to pass through the checkout and have a complete conversation with the checkout person about the bags, cashback and the fact that even if a second gateaux would only be 7pence you do not have space for it in your freezer all without them doing more than grunting. You finally manage to hand over the 2.15 that it costs to fill your freezer, drag it home, accidentally 'forget' to go into Somerfield, wrestle everything into the freezer and then collapse at your kitchen table with your still semi-frozen gateaux and a spoon.