The woman two places in front of me at Stockmann's, Moscow's best equipped Finnish supermarket, merely shrugged when the notice was brought to her attention, writes Seamus Martin. Stockmann's, the notice said, regretted that it had to raise its prices due to the rouble devaluation. Because of this situation the cost of each item would be 150 per cent of the marked price.
She then had her huge shopping processed as the rest of us waited.
One also kept oneself from boiling point by imagining the plight suffered by her, or someone close to her, which had forced her to purchase 300 of rolls of toilet paper.
The man between her and me suffered, it appeared, from another disability - an unquenchable thirst. Eight cases of mineral water and a dozen cartons of milk later it was my turn to be checked through.
I had come to Stockmann's in an effort to purchased three items which had eluded me since I started looking around Moscow on Saturday. I needed butter, washing powder and, of course, toilet paper. There was no butter to be seen so I asked an assistant.
"That's strange," she replied. "We got a delivery last night."
Then minutes later a burly man arrived with several boxes of Midnight Sun unsalted butter. Two rolls of toilet paper, one for now and another as a panic buy, were found easily but washing powder was a different matter.
"There's no washing powder," a surly attendant informed me in Russian. "Why is there no washing powder?" I asked. "Because it's finished," she replied not only with unanswerable logic but with the smirk of victory creeping over her face. Why, I asked, was it finished? There was no answer and the victory grin began to fade.
While Western TV viewers are being treated to the prospect of a Russia on the brink of starvation, Muscovites still have an extremely wide range of foods to choose from.
Pies and hot dogs are being sold at street corners. Vegetables are arriving in plenty from the market gardens on the edge of the city. Western food, a luxury to most Russians, is also available. There are frozen chickens by the thousand on view all over town.
It should be remembered that this is not the Soviet Union. There is money to be made in selling food and, despite the panic, it will not run out.
The real problem is that many Russians, mainly the elderly, simply cannot afford the price increases. Stockmann's 150 per cent rise has been echoed throughout the Russian capital.
Old people have simpler tastes too. One babushka complained that she could not find any grechka, the buckwheat used to make the Russian cereal, kasha. A Russian proverb says Shchi ta kasha, pisha nasha (Cabbage soup and kasha is our food).
The vast majority of Russians have not yet been reduced to traditional fare and those elderly people who have, could be forced to stick with the shchi and forgo the kasha for the moment.
To have lived to an old age in Russia is quite an achievement. One generation, of males at least, was lost almost in its entirety during the second World War. Life expectancy for the current generation of men is a mere 54 years.
The elderly are, therefore, mainly women, the famous Russian babushki. At present many of them spend their time between the shops, where they gather in small groups to curse the politicians and the high prices, the Sberbank (savings bank) where they check to see if the money they have saved for their funerals is still there, and the golden-domed churches where they gain whatever consolation they can.