The first time I chose a place to live on my own, someone told me to triangulate the yellow incident boards. I can’t remember the formula but if you are yay many yards from three big signs calling for witnesses to separate violent crimes, you’re in a dangerous area.
The second time I moved, it was all about primary school catchment. My ex-husband, a geologist, plotted the distance from the front door to the school using software that measured degrees of the Earth, to find that we were actually much closer than other, visually closer houses. I said: “Yeah, but I don’t think Lambeth council will be using your dumb software.” Then we had a row but moved in anyway, and it was all fine, at least as far as the school place was concerned. There is no lesson here.
When I moved in 2020, there was none of that, and I accidentally made the best decision of my life. I moved next door to a Lidl. Living next to any supermarket is a wonderful thing. I once timed the entire sequence from realising I had run out of butter to walking back into the house with it, and it was two and a half minutes. Lidl is very cheap and the best-paying supermarket in the UK, so that classic trilemma (do you want it fast, do you want it cheap or do you want it good?) is a unilemma.
But more than that, it is like a safari. Lidl never has the same things twice. Its priorities are wild. You will rarely find what you were looking for (gardening gloves), but you will certainly find something much better (a garden air lounger). If you get too attached to anything – a Dutch waffle, some freakishly large fusilli – you will never see it again. You would think this would be disappointing, but actually it’s like a fairytale, or sci-fi, a portal that will open only once. Think on your feet, sojourner! Why buy one tin of chilli German sardines when, if you like them, you’ll need 17? There is no bad decision in this shop, only non-buyer’s remorse.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
