I AM currently staying in a hotel because of work. I appreciate this makes me sound impossibly glamorous, like Sir David Frost or Rihanna, but I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.

For example, although I have tea and coffee making facilities, I do not have any biscuits. I bet Sir David Frost doesn’t want for bourbon creams. I bet Rihanna can’t even remember the last time she had to ask for a garibaldi.

She probably has her own garibaldi wrangler in her vast entourage. I certainly would.

I don’t have a wardrobe, either. There’s a bar sticking out from the wall with coat hangers dangling from it, enabling the domestic staff to judge me on my clothing as well as the state in which I leave my room.

“I find it incredible to believe, Consuela,” one domestic would say to another, “that a man who stays in a hotel because of work would have underpants from Matalan.”

“He is clearly a fraud, Magda,” the other would reply. “When you replenish his tea and coffee-making facilities, do not give him any custard creams.”

Nor do I have a proper shower. Yes, I have the correct plumbing. What I do not have is a shower base. What I have is a “wet room” which is correctly named, as far as it goes, but would be more accurately named an “Oh, crumbs, it’s going everywhere, what if it goes under the door and out into the bedroom, you only need one little leak/great, my socks are now soaking as I brush my teeth because the floor is still damp room”.

I admit it would be difficult to market a product under that name, but it would serve to show the manufacturers that they have created one of the most stupid inventions since my alien abduction/doppleganger excuse for not doing my Greek homework. A wet room makes as much sense as a gravy table.

“We’re not bothering with plates any more, Ian.”

“But the red wine jus is dribbling onto my chinos.”

“I saw it on Grand Designs, so shut your face and build a mashed potato dam.”

But I am mostly carping. It is all worth it because I get a cooked breakfast every morning. I only ever have a cooked breakfast when I go to hotels, mostly because I don’t need one in everyday life.

I do not till fields or dig hunks of carbon out of rock tunnels. I just move a mouse around a bit and press keys. If I had a cooked breakfast every day I would need two seats on the bus by August, one for each buttock.

Nevertheless, because this is, as I think I have suggested, a budget hotel, my breakfast is not cooked to order. It is a breakfast buffet, which is basically a trough filled with scrambled eggs, beans, and sausages, among other things.

I am not delighted by this because I have to decide A) how much I want to eat; and B) how much I can get away with taking. And so my greed and guilt are set, as ever, in conflict.

On my first morning at the hotel I decided to put off that battle and get my tea and orange juice first. One of the hotel employees, resplendent in a waistcoat with an eye-wateringly bright purple rear lining, was busying himself just to the right of the hot water machine.

“Do I just press this?” I asked Waistcoat Man.

“Dunno,” he replied.

“Casual,” I thought, as I pressed the button and watched the hot water fill my cup.

I spied some fruit salad. “Why not?” I thought. “It will counteract the bacon.”

“Are there any bowls?” I asked Waistcoat Man.

“Dunno,” he replied, barely looking at me.

“Do you know where the spoons are?”

“No,” he said, impatiently. There was no way he was getting a tip. He’d actually got my dander up.

“How long have you actually worked here?” I asked, my tone shot through with sarcastic vitriol.

Waistcoat Man stared at me. “I don’t work here,” he said. Then he picked up his plate and went to his table.

I refuse to accept the blame. If anything, it was his fault for wearing a waistcoat in a hotel for no reason.

I bet this never happens to Rihanna.

HAVING wheezed through the worst of the winter, my boiler finally decided enough was enough, and collapsed, like Devon Loch, last Friday.

We discovered it was weeping, a steady drip running from somewhere in its mysterious innards. And soon, so was I. Because I knew it meant I was going to have to get a man in.

It is bad enough, as I have documented painfully recently, having to take an item of machinery to a man to have it fixed, but so much worse to have one visit.

On Saturday, I bit the bullet. I’d had to empty the water from the big red Celebrations tin twice during the night, and it was increasingly clear that the boiler was not going spontaneously to mend itself.

Also, while the heating was still chugging away, we had lost our hot water. I don’t mind cold water. It is very useful, for example, when preparing a glass of lemon squash, or if I need something to take with a headache pill.

What I do not like is unexpectedly cold water. I am not one of these people who wakes up early on Boxing Day and thinks: “Thank flip that’s all over. I’ve had enough of warmth, being able to feel my extremities, and having testicles on the outside. I’m jumping in the sea with a load of ugly men in Speedos.”

So when I was made keenly and suddenly aware of the lack of hot water while I was in the shower, I decided to take action.

I phoned a helpline, not for the first time in my life. A patient woman answered. I explained my difficulty. She asked me if there were any children in the house – perhaps she thought they would be more articulate. I knocked a few years off their ages and said yes, and that they would need hot water, this being the early 21st century.

She outlined a choice of tariffs – one exorbitant, and one which would attach myself and my descendants for a thousand years to some sort of direct debit arrangement. I chose the former and an engineer was dispatched.

He arrived and looked at the boiler. “Have you had this cover off?” he asked. “Sort of,” I said, looking at my shoes.

He had a good look. It wasn’t difficult to see what was wrong. A jet of water was spraying out of a broken something.

“Yes,” he said, “Your something is broken. It’s very common.”

“Great, so you can fix it?” I asked.

“I don’t have the part,” he explained.

“But it’s very common?” I said.

“Yes,” he replied.

“But you don’t have the part,” I reiterated.

“No. I’ll be back on Monday,” he said, and with a “Hi-yo, Silver, away,” he swept out of the building like The Lone Ranger, only a Lone Ranger whose guns were coming on Monday, so I’d have to hole up in the abandoned silver mine and fight off the bandits single-handed for the rest of the weekend.

Three hundred and twenty-five kettles later, the engineer returned with the part, and the house took on That Atmosphere. That Atmosphere is the thing I like least about getting a man in.

I found myself, as always, virtually confined to my living room, uncomfortable in my own presence, not wanting to switch on the television. I didn’t want to walk around my house in case he thought I was either spying on him or some sort of house-wandering weirdo.

It’s the quiet, I think. Even the hammering and drilling – drilling, why is he drilling?! – cannot dispel that strange uneasiness when a workman is doing something in one’s house.

And I really wanted to go to the toilet, but I knew if I went he would need something from me at that moment, and I’d have to explain that I was using the toilet, and there would be an awkward moment when I came down the stairs, because he’d known I’d been to the toilet in my own house.

Then he called me. “Can I use your toilet?” he said. “Erm, yes,” I said. I pointed up the stairs. “It’s that one, there, with the toilet in…” He bounded off and conducted his business with the door open. Then he came back downstairs, apparently without washing his hands.

I was incensed. This was my house and that was incredibly unhygienic and disrespectful. I had to make a stand. I had to take back my own house.

And, so, emboldened, I switched on the television. That showed him.

I SPEND quite a lot of time on buses, but I do actually own a driving licence and, indeed, a car. It is a black car, and there the similarities between myself and Batman end.

A couple of Sundays ago I went out visiting, as people used to do on Sundays before they let the shops open. I had left a couple of items in the boot and needed to retrieve them before the visit proper began.

I pressed the special catch, the lock clicked open, and I pulled open the boot, and, basically, it all came off in my hand. Specifically, the plastic moulding around the catch, which I had always used to get purchase on the boot in order to open it, sheared off with a sickening crunch.

It dangled limply, attached only by some electrical wires, and I sighed. I tried to reattach it but it was no use. And I sighed again. Because I knew what this meant.

I was going to have to explain to a professional how I had broken my car and I simply do not have the vocabulary.

I returned home after applying gaffer tape to the affected area and called the dealership where I bought my car.

A pleasant woman in the service department answered.

“BOO-HOO! CAR BROKE! MEND CAR!” I said. I am only partially paraphrasing.

“And what is the problem?” the woman asked, after I’d calmed down.

“The bit around the catch has sheared off,” I said. I knew even then that wasn’t going to be enough.

“I’m sorry, sir, can you explain in a little more detail?” she asked.

“There’s a sort of plastic moulding around the catch on the boot. And I pulled it off.” As I said it, I must confess there was a part of me that was impressed by my own strength.

The service woman seemed happy with my explanation, which was good as, as I have explained, I do not have the vocabulary. I am not a mechanic. I know what a car is, and I know how to drive one, but that is about my limit.

I suspect many mechanics go home at night, and switch on their TVs or generic tablet devices, and have no idea how they work, or how to program in C++, or how HTML 5 handles multimedia files.

And that causes them no difficulty in social situations because knowing how to fix cars is part of the officially sanctioned list of Man Skills, while knowing how to fix computers is not

I do think the list needs to be updated, in the same way that the basket of shopping in the Consumer Prices Index is frequently updated to remove, say, Dickie Valentine long-players, and replace them with, I don’t know, something on the internet. But in the meantime I am stuck.

I arrived at the service desk at the time of my appointment. I tried to hand over my service book and the wheel nuts which the woman on the phone had insisted I would need – which were in the boot, and which made me tear the moulding off again because I’d forgotten – though even I knew that you don’t have to take the wheels off to fix the boot.

The woman on the service desk chuckled at my nuts. “We won’t be needing them, sir,” she said. I ignored the opportunity for the obvious line and merely looked at her ruefully.

I sat in the waiting area, and watched as men in oily overalls – real men – did mechanical Man Things, while I did some non-manual work with a pen, and wished I were a real man.

Then I decided that there were many sorts of men. We need men who design cars, and men who fix cars, and men who drive cars. And that is just in the car sector. There are several other jobs, too.

And a world of mechanics would be a world with lots of working cars, but precious little poetry and music and risotto.

I had earned the money which paid for the mechanics to fix my car. I am a real man, dammit. I have the underpants and Sure for Men to prove it.

Reassured in my masculinity, I went back to my work. And then Chaka Khan came on the radio. And as the mechanic walked over to me to tell me the work was complete, I absent-mindedly started to sing along.

“I’m Every Woman, it’s all in meeeee.”

And this is basically why I get the bus.

WE have run out of food. I am not talking about an Old Mother Hubbard situation, I just mean that all the food has now been invented.

All we are doing is stalling for time until the scientists finally stop divving about on BBC2 in front of lavishly filmed vistas and get around to inventing magic food pills.

In the absence of actual innovation, the manufacturers of our food are playing around with already existing grub and it’s about time they stopped.

It all started with the Chunky Kit-Kat. The Kit-Kat was a perfectly decent bit of confectionery. Yes, it didn’t stand up to heat, and it was always a little frustrating if it had been just that bit too close to your cup of tea, meaning that half the chocolate got stuck to the foil, but that was part of the hedonistic thrill.

And we even had a choice regarding the size of our wafer-based chocolate treat. If you were some sort of miserable vinegar-faced puritan, or a catwalk model, you could have the two-fingered variety, while normal people could opt for a proper four-fingered Kit-Kat. That was all the choice we needed.

But then some complete idiot decided that what we really needed was a gigantic Kit-Kat, and somehow managed to smuggle that idea past a meeting, and now it’s Kit-Kat anarchy. There are too many flavours and varieties and I am worried that one day there will be a beef Kit-Kat, and what if it isn’t beef, but it’s horse?

And other manufacturers have looked at the terrifying array of Kit-Kattery and decided they would do the same.

I saw a particular chocolate bar on sale today being advertised on the grounds that it had a new shape. That is a little like an off-licence boasting that it is “Under New Management.”

What sort of person is tempted to buy a chocolate bar based on the fact that the shape of the individual chunks has changed? It is hard to imagine, but I will have a go…

CHEZ CHARLES AND EDDIE. (Charles and Eddie are a gay couple, but their sexuality is not an issue in this context. I am just being modern.)
CHARLES: Edwardo, I have just popped to the shops and picked you up a treat.
EDDIE: I wish you wouldn’t call me Edwardo just because we are now gay married. What is the treat?
CHARLES: It is a Fruit & Nut bar, of the sort Frank Muir used to advertise.
EDDIE: Ugh! I cannot believe you have done this to me. I want a gay divorce.
CHARLES: But wait, Edwar… Eddie. Hear me out. I wouldn’t inflict a traditional Fruit & Nut bar upon you. This one is new, and has a curved aspect to its individual pieces, rather then the harsh lines of memory.
EDDIE: Hand it over immediately. I have been waiting even longer for a lozenge-shaped chunk than I have for equal marriage under the law. Then rush back to the shop and buy ALL the Fruit & Nuts. I must have them all.
CHARLES: You really are very high-maintenance, aren’t you?

But all of this nonsense is over-shadowed by the recent faffery surrounding pizzas, and I think we have finally reached the tipping point.

It started with the stuffed crust pizza. I don’t mind a stuffed crust pizza. It is just a way of putting more cheese on a pizza. Who could object to that? If you don’t like cheese on your pizza, you don’t like pizza, so it’s none of your business.

But what we did not realise was that the stuffed crust pizza was the Chunky Kit-Kat moment for pizzas. And it led to the abomination I experienced a few nights ago.

I returned from work to find pizza had been bought for dinner. You don’t need to know why. But I slipped open the lid, noted the tell-tale bulging rim of a stuffed crust pepperoni pizza and lifted a slice to my mouth. I bit into the crust…

It was not cheese. Some imbecile had decided that it was perfectly all right to stuff the crust with hotdog sausages smeared with American mustard, and nobody had the intelligence or the gumption to stop him.

This is how the Roman Empire ended. It is just a matter of months, possibly weeks, before Western Civilisation crumbles. And then we really will run out of food.

And it’s all Professor Brian Cox’s fault.

CABIN fever had taken a hold and I decided I had been in isolation far too long.

I have been working mostly on my own for the past few months. Even my imaginary friend has abandoned me and gone to live in a newly-restored castle in the air.

I am considerably freer with my burping than I have ever been, and was a playing card’s breadth away from sitting in work in just my pants. It was time to venture outdoors.

I needed a drink – and I have sworn off vending machines after last week’s debacle – so I went to the nearby Tesco to see if it had any.

This Tesco has what I can only describe as curmudgeonly automatic doors. They open only when the customer is right on top of them – requiring a leap of faith far in excess of that demonstrated by a buyer of one of the retailer’s Value meals.

And then they open at the speed of a surly teenager doing the washing up. Perhaps it is a way of weeding out the riff-raff, those people who are not sufficiently committed to going to Tesco. After all, these days the firm can afford to be choosy.

There was a massive queue, so I decided this trip wasn’t for me, and I left the store, openly mocking the curmudgomatic door system. I thought I would go further in search of refreshment and headed for the premises of a newsagent chain located in an office building a couple of hundred yards away.

I jumped backwards as a skateboarder tore past me. He was about my age and I thought, among other unprintable things, that a man in his mid-20s seemed far too old to be tearing about on skateboards. Then I realised that I haven’t been in my mid-20s for about 15 years.

I am middle-aged, but my brain has not yet caught up with that fact. I still expect a pat on the back, maybe a little applause, when I do a grown-up thing like travel on the train to a different town, or put the bins out, or do my job without setting fire to the building.

And even if I did set fire to the building, I’d feel they should be easy on me because I’m only 41. This is not a recent development. I am told that when I was three, I was placed in a playpen with my baby brother, who then, like most people forced to exist in close quarters with me, started to assault me. Reluctant to hit the infant back, I said: “Please don’t hit me, I’m only three.”

I rather assumed that I would feel like an adult at this age, but I do not. I am merely behaving like an adult and hoping that nobody notices long enough for me to get away with it.

I walked past a street-level conference room in the office building and noticed a meeting taking place. Ten people were sitting around a table and I would be amazed if fewer than eight of them felt the same way as me – that they were the odd one out in a room full of grown-ups. It was an oddly reassuring thought.

And so I reached the newsagent, which also has automatic doors, though nippier than Tesco’s. I launched myself towards them, confident that I was not uniquely rubbish at being an adult. And bounced straight off them.

I tried again. The doors were closed, but there were people in the shop, so I forced my fingers into the crack and tried to pull the doors open. The assistant glared at me. “They’re broke. Yer’ve got to go round,” she said, and pointed at an alternative entrance accessible only from within the office building.

So I walked around, and discovered I had to enter the office building through turnstiles, operated by a magnetic pass, which I did not have because I don’t have passes to every building in the world as I am not Batman.

I walked back to the shop entrance. “I can’t get in because I don’t work here,” I said. The assistant looked at me with an expression combining both helplessness and disdain. It would have been easier for me to get into Fort Knox, or Hollister.

And so I shuffled off back to the queue in Tesco.

The only way I was getting into that newsagent shop was if I gave up my job, changed career, and got a position in one of the firms in that office building.

I didn’t want a drink that much. Besides, I’m too old for that.

I HAVE written before about my complicated relationship with vending machines, but they still exist and we cannot ignore this, so I intend to revisit the topic today.

I fancied a Picnic some time ago. I am not sure why, perhaps I felt like a challenge, for Picnics are among the most difficult snacks to tackle. The peanuts get stuck in one’s teeth and are then lodged there, seemingly forever, by the improbably chewy and persistent caramel toffee. Combine this with the crunchy wafer, nougat, puffed rice and squishy raisins, and it’s a wonder that one’s poor teeth know what to do.

And the chocolate coating, presumably embarrassed by association with the shambles, tries to make a break for it, shattering and ending up all over one’s trousers.

It is almost as if the entire Picnic were designed by a sadist.

And this must have been a sadist who was completely unfamiliar with the concept of a picnic. I have never been on a picnic in which the basket was opened and somebody said: “I can’t believe you’ve forgotten the nougat and puffed rice.

“What sort of picnic is this, you total amateur?”

I am starting to feel a little sorry for the Picnic’s inventor now. No wonder he wanted to punish the world.

Somebody should have taken him on an actual picnic as a child and then he would have felt loved, and the Bad Thing that happened to me would not have happened.

So, the Bad Thing . . . I had to go to a vending machine to get my Picnic. I’m sorry if you’re a food fascist and that offends you. It is not my fault they don’t do macrobiotic and organic seed health biscuits in vending machines. I didn’t decide that the canteen should not have a permanent farmers’ market in the corner. I am as much a victim of the 21st century as you.

I dropped a shiny pound coin in the slot, but it did not clunk or chink. When one drops money into the slot of a vending machine, there are three noises it can make: the Clunk, which means that one’s money has been accepted; the Chink, which means the money has not been accepted for some reason – I don’t know, because it’s new, or it’s Tuesday, or something – and has fallen through to the change tray; and the Deathly Absence of Sound, which means the money is in a sort of limbo, Schroedinger’s slummy.

Perturbed by the Deathly Absence of Sound, but prepared to deal with that in a moment, I shifted over to the adjoining machine to get a can of fizzy pop.

Yes, I’m sorry again, food fascists, I didn’t have ready access to freshly-pressed parsnip and apple juice.

And as I bent over to shove my arm in and help the machine give birth to my can, somebody – a contractor in overalls – approached the first vending machine, dropped in a clunking coin, and swiped a Snickers. I heard the heavy fall of cash, and knew my pound must have been released.

But then the man scooped up the change and made to walk away.

“Hey, mate,” I said. He turned and dropped the coins into his pocket. I heard the jingle as they hit other money already waiting there. “I think you’ve taken my change.”

“No, I’ve just bought this.” He waved his Snickers at me, in a Freudian gesture.

“I know, but the thing is, I put my money in and I didn’t have a Clunk, and I got a drink, and you came in mid-transaction,” I explained. Possibly inadequately.

“Are you serious?” he asked. Now, that was a question.

“It’s on CCTV,” I replied, pointing at the camera. It was a desperate act, admittedly. I couldn’t imagine actually troubling the security guards to go through the footage. On the other hand, it WAS a quid.

“Fine!” the man huffed. He took a pound out of his pocket and slapped it into my palm, then he turned and strode away.

“Blimey,” I thought. “I could get used to this new assertive attitude of mine.”

Then I heard the Chink. I turned around. A shiny pound coin had landed in the change tray. My shiny pound coin.

After that, it becomes a bit of a blur. I know I found the man and I definitely gave him his pound back, but I don’t remember what I said to him, or what he said to me.

I just know it was no picnic.

IT WAS time to replace the kitchen. I don’t even like replacing printer cartridges, so it was clearly a drastic move.

It wasn’t a particularly bad kitchen, but the trim – I assume it’s called the trim – was carved and effectively a battery farm for dust.

What we needed was something sleek and modern and easy to clean, and mostly the last of that list of criteria.

We quickly dismissed the idea that I could assemble and install a flat pack kitchen, following the shoe-tree debacle, and put ourselves into the hands of professionals.

Sadly, we used professional extortionists and wind-up merchants rather than professional kitchen suppliers.

A rep measured up and came back to us with a design based on our exacting specifications, which were essentially, “A kitchen, please, with an oven and a fridge and other stuff.”

She talked us into having integrated appliances, as this would enhance the sleek and modern feel of the new kitchen. And I suppose we were gulled by her silver tongue. After all, who could resist the idea of under-the-counter doors all looking the same? This is the 21st century, grandad. But there was still a snag…

“What if something goes wrong?” I asked the rep. “Something always goes wrong. You should see the shoe-tree.”

The rep looked at me, perceptibly disappointed by our lack of faith in white goods technology. With a sigh and a recovering smile she assured us that wouldn’t be a problem. The appliances would just slide out and, if necessary, be replaced by a new one.

Reassured, we signed on the dotted line, and a couple of weeks later a team of heavy-booted men came. Within a week they had ripped out the old kitchen and replaced it with 90% of a new kitchen.

We then spent the next few weeks relentlessly pursuing the kitchen suppliers to complete the remaining 10% – that crucial 10% which would actually enable the room to be used as a kitchen – to the point where we felt like nuisances for wanting the work for which we had paid to be finished.

Eventually the job was done, but the beans of their revenge were already sown.

And a few years down the line they have grown into beanstalks of doom. The washing machine was first to go. It works, but the seal has gone, meaning that water trickles out into a Carte D’or ice cream tub which has been requisitioned for the purpose.

We would replace the washing machine – replacement being cheaper than repair in this age of obsolescence – but it has been blocked in by a plinth, and removing the plinth will entail removing half the kitchen.

And now the freezer has broken. Early investigations have shown that this will indeed slide out. But getting another freezer to slide back in is proving trickier than a tongue-twister to Jamie Oliver.

According to the Man In The Shop, the holes are in different places on different freezers. This basically means that the only freezer which we can guarantee will fit in the space being vacated by the old freezer is an identical model. And we know they break.

Why did we not listen to the little voice inside which said: “An integrated appliance in a fitted kitchen makes as much sense as integrated underpants in a pair of trousers,” and tell the rep to draw up new plans?

I live in a house with children and, consequently, a washing machine in round-the-clock use. I don’t think the covering door has ever been closed.

And it is not as if white goods are inherently embarrassing. I can’t imagine any circumstances in which the vicar came for tea and somebody said: “For Pete’s sake, Audrey, don’t let him anywhere near the kitchen. If he sees the Smeg, we’ll never get the children into St Bart’s.”

I suppose the lesson is always listen to the little voice and never trust anybody else. It is a harsh and brutal lesson, but this is a harsh and brutal world.

As a coda, a few weeks after the job was completed, the kitchen supplier went bust. I am not saying the curses I placed on the firm during the time of the missing 10% were to blame but I refuse to rule it out – I am not Richard Dawkins, or one of those atheist comedians they have these days.

Nobody screws me over with a plinth and gets away with it.

I HAVE never been an especially competitive person. I am probably the least competitive person I know.

One of my friends thought he was less competitive and we had a bit of an argument about it, backed up with examples and citations and Powerpoint slides.

And I let him win.

When I decided I would like to be a journalist, I went for a course assessment in Preston. I did quite well on the written papers, but there were interviews in the afternoon. I chose to go last, as I had the shortest journey home, and I wanted to get a feel for Preston.

It turns out one can get a feel for Preston relatively quickly, and I spent three hours looking in a comic shop, trying to look different every time I passed a busker, and not walking on the cracks in the pavement.

The interview started quite well, then one of my interrogators apologised for my long wait, and I said it seemed only fair seeing as I lived the nearest. And I saw the lights go out in their eyes.

This boy, they evidently thought, does not have the killer instinct of a born journalist. We cannot see this boy, they thought, accidentally gatecrashing a drug baron’s child’s birthday party, becoming trapped on an illegal camp site by burly gypsies, or being chased across a football pitch by geese.

How wrong they were.

But as age has started to strip away the vitality from my body, like the ocean wearing rocks into pebbles, so my patience has eroded. And today the last remnants floated away into the sea.

I get the bus every day. I have probably mentioned this before. It is not an eccentric lifestyle choice, it is a matter of necessity.

In fact, if I were told tomorrow that I would no longer have to get the bus because they had invented something better, like jetpacks, or remote working from home, I would be delighted.

But we do not live in that sort of world, and so I try to derive as much pleasure as I can from getting the bus. That means sitting on the top deck front seat driver side – the best seat on any bus. It is the equivalent of getting a corner office in Mad Men.

This morning, the bus I did not want arrived at the bus stop first. I moved out of the way and saw my bus arriving behind it. My eyes flicked to the top deck. The seat was free, and I was in pole position, closest to the door of the bus. But then I looked back, and saw two young women who were at the bus stop before me walking towards my bus. I could have pretended not to have seen them – do not think I was not tempted – but my killer instinct was still shackled.

I let them on in front of me and watched, helpless, as they walked up the stairs. I dared to hope as I took the stairs two at a time…

But, no. They were sitting in the prime seat, my seat. I shuffled down the bus, flopped into a second-rate berth, and looked at them, my eyes boring into their backs. If they had taken some sort of pleasure in sitting in that seat, I would have been able to cope with it. If they had even looked down the periscope once… Instead they chatted throughout the journey. They could have sat anywhere.

I’ve been working on a project in a stuffy office the past few weeks and decided today to get some air. I needed some cash anyway, so I left the office and walked the short distance to the cash point. There was a younger man walking just ahead of me, and I just knew he was going there too.

The bus disappointment was still raw, and something snapped.

I sped up, passed him, and got to the cash point first. I heard him tut, but felt triumphant. Yes, I am in my forties, but I can go toe to toe with a much younger man and win. I felt like Rocky Balboa, though in the later films.

Then I realised that my jacket was on the back of my chair in the stuffy office, safely housing my wallet. I had no cash card on me.

And so I leant forward, made myself as wide as possible to block his view with my body, and I pretended to put a card in the machine and then to use it.

I might be able to compete with others, but I will never be able to win against myself.

I HAVE never worked in retail, unless you count the week I spent on the tuck shop in school.

Actually, you should count that, as my tuck shop experience is what convinced me that retail was not for me. I do not want to go into detail, I will just say that I am unable to look at Drumstick lollipops without wincing.

So I have deep respect for all of those people who do work in retail, dealing all day with the public, because I know I am incapable of doing their job. I do make an exception for that woman in WH Smith, who, when I informed her I did not need a carrier bag, said: “Yeah, yeah, save a tree.” But then there is a dodgy till in every checkout.

I say deep respect, but of course I have my limits. And this weekend I discovered what those limits are. I had been left in sole charge of a child of my close acquaintance while out shopping, and had been given one of the most difficult choices anybody has been forced to make: Build A Bear Workshop or the Disney Store?

It was no choice at all, really, there was no way I was going to the workshop. I do not know if you are familiar with Build A Bear Workshop. It sells outfits for teddy bears. It is basically a ruthlessly efficient machine to extort cash from adults by using their own children as weapons against them.

I will say this once. Teddy bears don’t need clothes. They are covered in fur and are designed for cuddling. PVC, zips and souwesters are completely unnecessary.

And so I found myself going to the Disney Store, and being greeted by the second worst thing in retail. Literally. The greeter. Somebody actually employed to say hello and goodbye to customers as they enter and leave the store. I know that these are straitened times, and job creation should be encouraged, but this really is pushing it.

When I go into a shop, I just want to enter quickly, hand over as little money as possible, and leave. It is not a visit. I don’t want somebody to be paid to be nice to me, although I understand that cash would have to change hands.

And it is worse when she says goodbye to me, especially if I have not bought anything, as I then feel guilty for wasting her time. I imagine her putting on a brave face as she cheerily says goodbye while secretly being heartbroken.

I muttered hello as the child and I entered the store, and immediately was faced with a display of Disney Princesses. I had a flashback to Boxing Day, when I spent three quarters of an hour trying to release such dolls from their packaging, and I flinched so hard I expect you can see it on the store CCTV footage.

We walked further into the dispiriting jungle of purple and pink and glitter. I have no problem with Disney’s film output, which is usually saltier, wittier, and weightier than you might imagine. But the toys and merchandise based on those films are so sweet they make me want to brush my teeth.

I appreciate that 41-year-old men are not Disney’s core demographic, but even I can see that it’s pap. Luckily, the child I was with appeared to accept that thesis too and we were able to leave the store without making a purchase.

But near the exit was the greeter.

I don’t know what was going through my head. Maybe I didn’t want to feel guilty for not buying anything. Maybe I wanted to stick it to Disney’s corporate philosophy. Nevertheless it became very important to me that I escape the store without being bade farewell.

We waited near the greeter for somebody to enter, thinking that she would be distracted by having to say hello. So it proved. We darted forward… straight into the display of princesses. It collapsed like a camp game of Jenga.

I made an attempt to aid the greeter in her rebuilding of the display, but it became quickly apparent I was not helping. “Sorry, bye,” I said.

She didn’t reply. There wasn’t enough money in the world to make her, and I couldn’t blame her. So in one way, I succeeded, but in all the others, I failed badly.

It was still better than going to the Build A Bear Workshop.

I DO not like it when people tell me I must read a particular book or watch a particular film.

Perhaps it is my innate sense of fair play, but there are many books and films I have not yet experienced, and it seems like queue jumping.

Also, it is quite a significant investment in time to read a recommended book or watch a recommended film just so that you can tell the person who recommended it to you that he or she was absolutely right and it was a very good film or book.

My advice is to pretend to read or watch the thing, and when your so-called friend asks you what you thought of it say this: “Oh, you were totally right. Brilliant (or rubbish, depending on the tone of the original recommendation). That bit near the end. I couldn’t believe it. You know that bit where…”

At that point your friend will chip in, filling in the blanks, and the heat will be off. You might consider this a risky course of action but I promise you such behaviour got me and several others through the English module of my degree course.

But I mostly do not like being told to sample something because it reminds me of the lowest point of my life, when I did A Very Bad Thing.

It was 10 years ago, and I suppose the statute of limitations is up on Very Bad Things which do not involve physical harm. It’s times like this I wish I’d paid more attention to the Law module of my degree course. Actually, I’m not sure I even did Law.

I am babbling because I do not want to tell you what I did, but I suppose I must.

Ten years ago, I worked for a female editor a couple of years my junior. She was one of those go-getting women that they have these days on the television. She is no longer a newspaper editor. She decided one day she would become a best-selling chick-lit author and sorted that out basically in an afternoon.

We were chatting about books one day – perhaps she was doing early market research – and she mentioned an excellent book she had read. Let’s pretend it was The Very Big Turnip.

“I haven’t read it,” I said, with rightful trepidation about where this was going.

“You must,” she said. “I will,” I said. “I’ll lend you it,” she said.

The next day she handed over a dog-eared copy of The Very Big Turnip and explained to me that she wouldn’t be speaking to me again until I had read it. I momentarily considered the idea that I might employ the English module stratagem, but she was too sharp and, also, my boss.

So I read the book (Have you read it? You must. That bit with the mouse near the end!) and came back into work. I was gently grilled by my editor and came through it unscathed. “Where is it?” she said. “Still at home,” I replied. “I left it on the kitchen table so I wouldn’t forget it, and forgot it.”

When I went home, I was informed that a small child of my acquaintance had found the book on the kitchen table and taken such a shine to it that he had made copious margin notes on virtually every page in what educationalists would regard as emergent writing and everybody else would regard as a massive load of scribbling.

A little bomb went off inside my head. If the book had been the editor’s own I might have got away with it. But it was a borrowed book.

I panicked. I tore out to Borders (RIP), bought an identical copy of the book, then came back home and spent a good two hours foxing the book. I bent back pages, scratched it with a scalpel, yellowed it with a damp teabag, and flung it around the room. In the end it was almost indistinguishable from the original copy apart from the Biro spirals and anatomically inaccurate faces.

The next day I handed it over to the editor. “Here you go. Wasn’t the bit with the mouse…?”

“Are you sure this is my book?” she asked.

I looked her in the eye. “It’s either your book, or I’ve bought a replacement and foxed it in an ridiculous attempt to deceive you. Now what do you think?”

She took the book. I think we both had learnt a valuable lesson.