I experienced something new today - rancid butter.

Desperately craving toast this morning, I wandered down to our local corner shop to get some of that reliable Clover goodness. For all you readers outside the UK, Clover is a brand of butter here which I find, well used to find, extremely tasty. It's high in salt, high in saturated fat and high in everything else which is bad for you.

So, on entering the small shop I did a quick eye scan of the freezer section and then homed in on the distinctive bright yellow packaging. There was a handful of 3 'Clovers' left on the shelf. I was like 'yessss' and almost punched the air. But my excitement was short lived. Although they did have about 2 weeks left before their expiry date, the fine layer of dust gathered on their lids indicated they'd been sitting on the only moderately cool open freezer shelf for months, if not years. I weighed my options, but thoughts about buttery toast won over and I decided to go for it.

Then came the disappointment. I didn't notice it straight away, but there was a strange taste, it just took a while to errr...develop. At first I tried to pin it on the multigrain bread I was eating; perhaps I'd lucked out and bitten into a bad seed or something, but nope it was the rancid butter! Shameful really, but I can't say I was surprised.

Now I know butter isn't something you usually grab 'on the run', or on your way to a mate's party...'oh yeah can you just pick me up a tub on the way', but really, it's no excuse. Yes, turnover of butter in a small shop is low, but you've got to stocktake accordingly and cut your losses if products start to expire. So... this is a call to all independent supermarkets out there - please get your act together!