Thawed for my convenience! I was quite overcome and would have shed a tear where I stood had not the microchip of cynicism and doubt active in my mind since birth not wondered if the reason it was thawed was to enable the supermarket to sell it in the non-frozen deli section and portray it in a more attractive state than as a fish ice block, and that my convenience had little to do with it.

It was also another method of indicating in a circuitous way that the fish had not been caught yesterday and had been frozen, thus avoiding accusations of misrepresentation. Could it have been that the for-my-convenience sign was preferable to one reading: "Farmed six months ago in Thailand and frozen solid until yesterday when we hauled it out of the deep freeze and let it melt. Guaranteed to taste like reconstituted cardboard. Please enjoy."

There were some prawns on offer which also had been thawed for my convenience. They had also been peeled, the thoughtfulness of the management knowing no bounds. I passed on the once-frozen cardboard fish and the defrosted crustaceans which I have suffered in the past and found to be possessed of all the flavour of boiled woodchips.

I wandered over to the fruit section where I was moved to discover that for my convenience, all the avocados had been hand-picked so that each one was possessed of the consistency of a green rock. If your kitchen was equipped with a jackhammer or you had access to explosives, you may have been able to open one but the knife had not been made which would even scratch their granite-hard surface. Given the passage of sufficient time - about six months - they could well ripen but, as I was planning to eat within the next hour, this was a small consolation.

I paused for a moment at the bananas before moving on, for I knew that they had been gas-ripened for my convenience and would turn brown by the time I made it to the car park. I trundled over to the meat section and strolled past the sausages, each polystyrene tray of which I knew from previous experience had, for my convenience, been pumped with enough fat to fill a wheelie bin. You didn't cook these sausages. You stood five metres from the barbecue, tossed them at the grill and then threw yourself flat on the ground as they ignited with a mighty whoosh. Admittedly, they did cook quickly but tended to be a tad overdone.

I thought about buying some olives and cheese so I went back to the deli section which, for my convenience, was so understaffed that a 20-minute wait clutching my numbered ticket was inevitable. Every night at six o'clock it was like this. If they were so concerned for my convenience, they could always put on extra staff, but I guess that would have cost more than the sign advertising their care and concern in thawing the fish for me.

I left without thanking the deli-fish counter staff for their consideration in going to so much trouble on my behalf which was, I confess, churlish of me. "Stuff it," I thought. "I'll indulge in some potato chips," so I eventually found the potato chip aisle, unlabelled for my convenience, and tracked down my favourite brand.

These are marketed as Deli Style chips and anyone worth their cholesterol count and who knows a potato chip from a bagel crisp will agree that chip-wise, they are beyond peer. Accordingly, they are popular and as usual, for my convenience, the racks where they should have been stacked were empty.

   "We've run out," I was told.
   "So I see, but why not order more?" I asked.
   "We still run out because people just buy more," complained the supermarket person.
   "I can see how that would be a problem," I said and walked away.

I needed petrol and drove to the local servo which, for my convenience, had installed loudspeakers beside each petrol pump which blasted out commercials for everything from real estate to pizza. I was so overcome by this thoughtfulness that I left without buying any fuel.

The previous evening I'd been in a cab which, for my convenience, had been installed with screens mounted on the rear of the front seats so that I could be assaulted by advertisements as I sat and tried to enjoy the ride for which I was paying. I hadn't paid for advertisements and I didn't want them but how ungrateful of me not to revel in them for they had been installed for my convenience.