I have noticed over the years how many men sit in their cars on supermarket car parks, while their wives are inside doing the shopping, or wait outside butchers. It seems that I see it more these days; or maybe it’s just that, in retirement, I visit such places more frequently. I have always wondered why they do this. It surely cannot be that they fear their cars will be stolen. Do they think that shopping for food is an unmanly activity? In some cases it’s obvious idleness – I saw a chap this morning who, when he spotted his wife struggling through the rain back to the car with a loaded trolley, popped the boot from inside and went back to his newspaper leaving his better half to do the heavy lifting.

 

Men who behave in this way have surrendered any possibility of influencing what gets put on the dinner table, but I doubt if this stops them complaining when it doesn’t suit them.

 

However, not all shopping is fun; for example the interminable traipsing from boutique to boutique in search of garments that probably don’t exist, the agony prolonged by the refusal of someone to ask for assistance and minute scrutiny of items not even remotely on the search list. Yesterday, when on just such a painful outing, I was hanging about in a posh frock shop in York, in what I hoped was a sullen way, where I spotted a very rare bird indeed – a natty looking cove, sprawling on a sofa from which he actively engaged in his wife’s search for the right dress. Too actively, in my view, and in a way that systematically undermined her self-confidence. I watched her diminish before my very eyes. And he was suspiciously well-informed. Everything she tried on, most of them to my admittedly untutored eye looked charming on her, he scoffed at and sent her packing back to the changing room. I exchanged strange oeillades and most meaning looks with the helpful but exasperated assistant as we shared our disapproval. At least I think that’s what we were sharing, but you never know.

 

There was something very odd about this fellow, but it took me a while to work it. He had a rather dubious tan, and he was wearing shoes but no socks – a sure sign of a bounder.

 

I always go into the supermarket. For a start, it’s a bit of an outing. But more than that, it’s an opportunity slyly to introduce into the trolley forbidden treats such as cream buns and Kellogg’s Frosties - and to spirit out of it excessive salad stuff, especially the leaves that might have been harvested in hedgerows. I feel bad about it sometimes, but recent events in Germany have confirmed my suspicions, as salad ingredients are emerging one by one as lethally toxic. A cucumber can kill you in three days, but with booze it takes thirty years.

 

Best wishes

 

Howard