The cupboard is full of them, sealed hermetically tight. When the pantry door swings open, they’re all upright as if they’re a football crowd caught in freeze frame, as if some projectile or word of abuse about the umpire is about to spew forth. All done out in their team colours, Tunas stacked up in Safcol blue, baked beans outfitted in Heinz orange, rows of them. Stacks. Are we expecting a nuclear explosion or something? There’s so many of them. Perhaps while we’re not looking they breed. Perhaps they thrive on the darkness behind the closed door. Secret compartments at the bottoms of the cans suck in the darkness, lick it and taste it and use its ‘nothingness’ to produce more produce….This may explain the proliferation .

There seems to be something new each time the door swings open.. and I certainly haven’t indulged in anything down at those supermarket lanes – what happens down there I wonder? With 24 hour trading it would be hard for them to reproduce without being seen, security cameras ticking over recording every move. Security checks on camera ‘B’ would possibly ward them off. There’s a lot more opportunity for inter-breeding here – the brands compete for space and possibly the attention of each other- one could almost call it a ‘meat market’ but not every can contains meat. There’s an armoury of cans from every avenue of consumerism at the ‘mart’. They’re soldiers lined up on parade, arms stiffly at their sides, they and their respective adverts whisper and then play at full volume in my head – while the back ground music comes over with the generic supermarket slogan – ‘we are, we are’, all subtle psychological tricks played by the chain and by the cans themselves – is there really a can conspiracy? Do they own the supermarkets?