Food How do you pronounce Morrisons? Most of the time I hear it with a hard R then a weaker ONS. But for years now, decades, I've said it with a soft R and a real emphasis when reaching the ONS, with a slight West Country accent, so Murisuns. I've tried doing it the other way, many times just before sitting down to right but it won't stick, it just sounds wrong to me in the same way that the old adverts used to mangle it in order to make a rhyme work ("More reasons to shop at Morr-i-sons!").
Here's why. Back when I was an undergraduate in Leeds, the big supermarket most of us attended was the giant Morrisons at the Merrion Centre. Each Saturday I'd visit Leeds Market for the fresh meat and veg then toddle up The Headrow to the supermarket for half a cooked chicken or one of their freshly made "supadupa" pizzas for tea that night. Somehow I was able to feed myself for £15 a week, although to be fair that was quite a lot of money in those days even for student.
Although I was based at Beckett Park initially we had a Safeway close to hand in Headingley, Morrisons was cheaper so that's where people went and so therefore talked about and that included a friend from Somerset and since this was the first time I'd encountered the place and I heard her talk about it a lot, it's her pronunciation that stuck. I don't know if she still reads this, but here you go Rosie, this blog post's for you.
There's a shot of what the old shop looked like in the video about Leeds I made in the Practical Presentation Skills module of my library course which you can watch here. It's in the opening montage when The Bangles reach the lyric "You were so hard to please" in their cover version of Hazy Shade of Winter. I'm surprised and delighted to see that it's still there thirty odd years later although its surrounded by much greater competition than those days.
Liverpool has a couple of Morrisons in Speke and Belle Vale and they briefly flirted with the city centre through one of their convenience stores, the M Local, until they were all sold off in 2017 to a company which ultimately couldn't sustain them as a going concern (and ruined the best M Local feature, the salad bar). This sandwich was, however, bought in Southport because I was already there to visit the Waterfield's bakery.
As you can see I completely forgot to photograph the sandwich before eating it again, but having seen a few of these yourself by now, you can imagine what it looked like with the usual ingredients. It's fine, nice even, no better or worse than the Tesco or Asda examples with the cranberry chutney blending well with the stuffing and the bacon adding some nice texture.
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