And then there is this from dervala.net

The Messages
Monday, August 29th, 2005

Nora rode a Raleigh bike. It was black and basic—three gears, hand brakes, a pump for the inevitable punctures. A gray leatherette bag hung from the handlebars. Every day or every other day she'd ride into town for "messages."She would return with some muttonchops and rashers, the day's provisions, staples and necessities, ten Woodbines for Tommy, Maguire & Patterson matches, and a newspaper. The spuds and onions and cabbage all came from the haggard out the back door beyond the whitethorn trees. The eggs came fresh from her own hens. Bread she made—plump loaves of soda bread, crossed like a good Catholic, baked in her covered cast-iron pot with turf coals on the bottom and on top. Milk was their business. Every now and then she'd kill a goose.

But it was that trope, "going for messages,"—not marketing, not shopping—that best described the difference between the "custom" in West Clare and "consumers" in Michigan.

…

By then in America we went to "super" markets for the stuff that filled the back of cars with a month's provisions and spent the time at the checkout watching the charges as the clerk rang them up, or rummaging for the coupons, or sighing in commiseration with our fellow shoppers and sellers fro whom the transactions had become just work, just getting it—the money and the stuff. In trade for "messages" we got discounts, "paper or plastic?" and "have a nice day," all in the one monotony of corporate good manners. The market is common, global, and dull. We buy in bulk, bank by machine, and couldn't care less about the name on the sign. More and more, we point and click our way past any human interaction.
…

Nora came home the long road from Kilkee with a small bag of things—a day's worth of perishables, a night's worth of news—her messages. We return bulging with our bags and boxes of stuff—our newer faster brighter bigger better-than-ever-right-priced stuff—laden and empty, grim and wordless.

—Thomas Lynch, Booking Passage