We're no longer required to inconveniently seek out another source of food supplies with the closing of the supermarket we've long used as our major food shopping venue. Gone is the original store; closed, and moved to another nearby location much more commodious and able as a result, to stock far more choices than the other.

Under construction for a relatively short period of time, earlier in the week the new venue was opened, and there were many advertised food specials to attract a crowd.

How much of crowd we discovered for ourselves when we finally drove over to the new location, about a five-to-seven-minute drive from our house. At that new location where all manner of merchandise can be purchased from any number of large new box-style stores, located along a stretch of major roadway, the new parking lot of the new store was packed with cars, more coming by the minute, all vying for parking spots. There was a cadre of parking attendants in evidence, no doubt hired to help things move along smoothly for the first week or so.

Inside the store the shopper is greeted with an immense space and aisle after wide aisle of foods of various types, with store employees desperately attempting to pack shelves that were being steadily emptied by hordes of shoppers. Everything is gleaming, sleekly new. There is so much to view, to select from, that it becomes confusing, one is assailed by a sense of sensory- and attention-overload.

It's nice to see a wide array of food products available, and the cleanliness and neatness of the new facilities are admirable, but shopping that was once a relaxed affair is fast becoming a harried one, with too much to see, to choose from amongst, and end up with, the weekly supermarket venture becomes a chore.

The only thing that can be said to favour this new location of our old shopping choice is that it is sticking with the stocking of food. Unlike other big-box stores it has not ventured into other than comestibles, offering linens and electronics and other non-food items for sale, further distracting from the original purpose of a food market.