I Love Willy's

There's nothing which makes you feel more at home in a new place than doing the weekly shop at a big supermarket, and seeing all the hitherto-exotic locals queueing forlornly at the till and screaming at their children. My experience today was nowhere near as stressful - in fact, it was an almost ecstatic discount experience.

I decided to do a proper food shop instead of just getting dribs and drabs from overpriced convenience stores, and so I walked across town with my Bag for Life to Willy's, which markets itself as offering "Sweden's cheapest bag of groceries!" Even by British standards it is impressively cheap - I came home with a full bag of food, drink and household goods for £27 - but for Scandinavia it is sensationally good value, and after two weeks of spending soul-destroying amounts of money on food I found myself near-skipping down the aisles, just resisting the temptation to scoop dozens of tinned tomatoes into my basket in case the good times come to an end and Willy's goes bankrupt before my next visit.

The excitement was intensified by the fact that Melodifestivalen starts tonight, the sparkly pop music spectacular which runs for six weeks and has been my ultimate guilty pleasure for many years now. Thankfully, here I'm not the only one who loves it - there are magazines full of MF-related news and scandals, the supermarkets are offering special "festival prices" on TV-friendly food like nachos, dips and Pepsi, and my local Co-op has a big banner saying "Proud sponsor of Melodifestivalen." I'm not ashamed to say that tonight I will be sat in front of the TV with chocolate for company. Who needs a social life when you've got cheap groceries and schlager music?