When I was a lad my mother would give me a shopping list to drop off at the grocery shop on my way to school and then later in the day, if it was a small list, she would pop in and collect it. If it was the weekly shop, he would deliver it. This was of course a long time ago. Readers of my own age will not be as surprised as younger readers to learn that our bread and milk was delivered then daily by horse and cart. For that reason, I suppose, I still associate that lovely sweet smell of horse’s breath with freshly baked bread.

Shopping has evolved since then. I often do our weekly shop online and I am sad to say that I haven’t shopped for food in other than a supermarket for far too long. The power of the supermarkets drove prices down to the point that individual traders were no longer able to compete and now they have been eliminated from the market, the big players only have to compete with each other. How long before that ceases to be to our advantage, I wonder? One of the unlooked for results of shopping on line is a rather irritating phenomenon that is gradually becoming more prevalent. When did your local bookshop proprietor contact you a few days after you bought your Doctor Who annual to ask you if you were satisfied with your purchase and to evaluate the quality of the wrapping and delivery into your hand?

Or when did your fishmonger pop round to ask if your scallops were up to snuff?

Whenever I buy anything online, I am now subsequently asked to fill in an ever growing list of questions about the delivery and nature of the product I have bought. I buy online for speed, convenience and value. The speed and convenience are being gradually eroded by the time taken answering or, in my case now, deleting the endless stream of customer satisfaction questionnaires that follow any purchase. I would let them know if there was a problem. Take my silence as satisfaction please.

All these surveys and tick box forms are getting to be a total pain. And it’s just so they can say that nine out of ten dentists recommend it. Not that that necessarily works. I always worry about that one dentist who knows something the others don’t.