Sailing into uncharted mineral waters to boycott Israel bravely

NEWTON'S OPTIC:THANK YOU, thank you for your kind applause. I am of course relieved and delighted to be safely back home after my humanitarian trip around Tesco boycotting Israeli goods.

I want to begin this press conference by thanking a few of the people who made that journey possible: the helpful Filipino man in the car park who fetched me a trolley; the Never-Wobble Trolley Company of Guangzhou, China, who manufactured my sturdy vessel; and the lovely Nigerian woman on the checkout who directed me to several of the items I was refusing to buy, all the while tapping on the cash register’s keys with her wonderful sense of African rhythm.

I also want to thank the many people who encouraged me to take this courageous form of direct action, especially Ben and Emma, who mentioned it at their barbecue last Sunday, and Dan and Emily, who have both been to Cuba you know.

But most of all I want to thank my wife, or “shopping activist” as she prefers to be called, for agreeing to join me on this dangerous mission.

I think I can honestly say that the experience brought us closer, except when she wandered off into the clothing section, which left us somewhat further apart.

Deciding what brands not to put in our trolley was perhaps the hardest part of the entire operation. Before setting out, I typed “boycott Israeli goods” into Google and received 167,000 results, including Google itself, which has an office in Tel Aviv and research centres in Haifa and Ramat Gan.

It seemed that almost every major food, technology and media corporation on Earth was directly involved in supporting the rogue state of Israel. But closer examination revealed that these lists are just compiled by people who think Jews control the whole world, so all we could really do was boycott orange juice as usual.

Departing from the customer services kiosk, the first part of our journey passed uneventfully enough before we turned left into Mediterranean vegetables.

But after a brief stop at the Maltesers, we soon found ourselves surrounded by towering walls of orange juice and other orange-juice-related products, including orange and pineapple and orange and mango.

There was orange juice as far as the eye could see. Orange juice, orange juice everywhere and not a drop to responsibly drink. Not surprisingly, it became quite difficult to concentrate.

Now was the time to finally make our stand.

“I refuse to purchase any of these products!” I shouted at the top of my voice.

Well, maybe not shouted. But it was implied by my demeanour. I definitely put it on Twitter. I may also have posted it on Facebook, with the privacy set to “Everyone”.Whatever I did, it was enough to attract some unwelcome attention.

As we rounded the aisle into mineral waters, we were suddenly approached by security guards and ordered to leave.

I could hardly believe the arrogance of these people.

“You have no right to stop our trolley here,” I said. “We are in mineral waters. Did you hear me? I said we are in mineral waters!”

But they didn’t seem to understand.

What an outrage.

Don’t they realise how important I am?