16 NOVEMBER 1985, Page 32

Help yourself

Pick up plastic tray, damp still.

Bread roll or sandwich? Not bread roll, not scone, cheese salad clingwrapped, not cold childlike chicken, pale egg lolling on lettuce. Beet bleeds.

Not steak pie peas and mash. Gateau?

Fruit salad, pastry, pork pie? No.

Not coffee, tea, hot milk, shandy nor cola, lemonade or squash.

Unmoved behind the counter she rings up two pounds and forty pence.

`I've taken nothing! Nothing on display was what I fancied.'

`Well I don't know, it's all laid out. The choice is up to you.'

He fancied nothing. And will have to pay