Wed 15 Dec

A lovely surprise at my local supermarket. They've installed self-service checkout machines. Cue lots of unsure and concerned looking locals, tiptoeing around them, scratching their heads, before deciding against Mons' latest forray into the 21st century. Most people seemed more than happy to join the usual enormous queues (and painfully slow service) that are standard in this shop.

I happily felt more than confident to give them a go. After all, I have had years of experience of using them at Asda and M&S, where they never seem to work properly and give the illusion of you saving time. In practice you spend most of the time trying to catch a shop assistant's attention because you have an 'unexplained item in the bagging area,' or you need someone's approval because at the age of 31 you've decided to buy a bottle of wine and they need to check you're not 15.

To be fair, when they first got introduced in England, I think most people (technologically sceptical by nature) stuck with the familiar and checked-out via a human being and not a machine.

Still, in the last couple of months we've had Sunday opening and now self-service checkout machines. Whatever next? "Le cash-back?"