Do you remember the good old days? When you worked for the mill owner, lived in houses he built, shopped in shops he owned and – if you were very lucky – paid the rest of your wages over to him via pints in the local pub called, with good reason, Your Landlord's Arms? Well, good news! Tesco has announced that it is moving into housebuilding. It plans mixed-use developments in London, Ipswich and the north-east. You will be able to buy or rent a Tesco house, potentially via a Tesco estate agent, get a Tesco mortgage and furnish it with Tesco homewares on your Tesco credit card. Vertical integration just came of age, and with extra Clubcard points.
Tesco, naturally, denies that it is embarking on model village-building. It seeks only to create up to 1,000 new jobs in the stores around which these estates would be built. But instead of blowing such smoke up one's sceptical ass, why doesn't it enthusiastically embrace the opportunities in this brave new world.
Do it properly. I see Tesco cars with pound-coin slots that can be driven shonkily over red, white and blue roads that, viewed aerially, spell out "Every little helps!" (a Jane Horrocks-voiced satnav will direct). I see a £2 chicken in every pot and a mini-multistorey carpark in every driveway. I see roads named after the stores' most important features – Soup Aisle Avenue, Reduced Chiller Cabinet Close, Synthetic Bakery Smell Street, Market Share Square (complete with bronze statue of Sir Terry Leahy clutching tenners in one hand and Britannia's neck in the other), leading to Screwed Suppliers Walk.
Oh, the 18th-century landowners would weep to see the chances Tesco's supposed men of vision could be passing up! Let us hope they see the light soon. With such a Tesco world in the offing, who wouldn't want to live in it?
