A shelf with room on it

On a Thursday evening in an Alexandria supermarket, the trolleys tell two different stories.

One belongs to someone who has run out. The cooking oil is finished, the last of the lentils went into yesterday's soup, the tea tin is empty. This trolley is a repair. Without it, the kitchen stops working by Saturday.

The other belongs to someone whose cupboards are mostly stocked. There is a spare bottle of oil at home, a packet of pasta, half a jar of jam. This trolley is a top-up. Nothing in that house would stop if it never arrived.

At the till, they look identical. The aisle cannot tell them apart, and the offers stacked at the end of each one are designed so that the shopper cannot either. A gap on a home shelf is made to feel like an emergency, and a cupboard with space in it starts to look like a cupboard that has failed.

The two feelings are worth pulling apart, because they ask for very different responses. Running low is a real signal: something needs replacing so that life can carry on. Having room is only a fact about a shelf. It is not a request.

There is pleasure in a full cupboard, and I will not pretend otherwise. Lining up new jars feels like being ready, like being looked after. That pleasure is allowed. It is simply not an obligation, and a household that reads every empty space as hunger will never once feel that it has enough.

Most of the time, the shelf is not hungry. It just has room on it.