You see some strange things in supermarket queues. I once saw a student eat a whole baguette. Not in one mouthful, like a trainee sword-swallower, but one big, dry chunk at a time. No butter, no marg, not even a smear of Marmite; it made me thirsty just watching his Adam's apple furiously bobbing up and down as he purposefully wolfed down the entire two-foot stick of bread.

I knew he was a student because he was gangly, had mad hair, a dirty T-shirt and was eating a whole baguette in the middle of Tesco. But I would have known anyway without these obvious crib notes. You only had to peer into his basket to see he was a student. It contained a 24-pack of those teeny bottles of lager that look like they were made for alcoholic munchkins, a copy of Loaded magazine (well, one needs a break from Proust every now and again, doesn't one?), a bumper pack of rice and an extra large squeezy bottle of ketchup.

Cheap rice, the stuff that costs 34p for a bag the size of the Isle of Wight, covered in a non-brand tomato sauce is a delicacy that has been handed down from generation to generation of students since time immemorial, or at least since the toffs started letting us commoners get ourselves an education instead of getting them another bottle from the wine cellar (cue forelock-tugging and copious boot-licking).

I am pleased to say I have never tried this culinary delight myself. I've enjoyed (for "enjoyed" read "had terrible stomach cramps, but managed not to actually vomit") pasta with Bovril on those numerous occasions as a trainee journalist when my wage ran out approximately 11 days into the month but, as I was never a student, rice and tomato sauce passed me by.

I have it on good authority though from my other half, who survived on it for three years while sharing a grotty Tottenham bedsit with an extended family of rodents, that it is just as tasty as it sounds.

On a more recent occasion, while queuing to hand over all my worldly goods at a supermarket in exchange for ten items or less, I saw a woman changing her son's nappy in a trolley.

Emergency nappy changing is a skill most mothers become quite adept at. I, for instance, can now change an extremely smelly nappy in the early hours of the morning after a snifter or two and about 22 minutes sleep without waking the baby. Sometimes I don't even wake myself.

But this woman had me beat. In one quick, fluid movement, she swept the kid out of the trolley seat and into the back. As he stood hanging on for dear life next to the cornflakes and the Go-Cat, she whipped off his honking monstrosity of a nappy, wiped him down, applied a liberal layer of cream and slipped on a new pristine bum bag.

It was all done in a flash. So quick, in fact, that the man behind me didn't even notice.

Then again, that is not entirely surprising because he was busy passing on the monumental news to his wife via his mobile that - brace yourselves - "Bob's grown a goatee".

Which brings me to what some people might regard as a point.

Perhaps it is just me, but this is precisely the sort of mind-numbing, mobile phone-related nonsense that makes me want to hit people on the head repeatedly with a sock full of snooker balls.

I can't comprehend why people feel the need to jibber on about this sort of stuff on their mobiles all the time.

Even the supermarket is not safe anymore.

I can no longer do my weekly shop without crashing my trolley into people bleating "chunky or smooth?" down the phone, or "yeah, I'm still in aisle three" or - heaven help us - "Bob's grown a goatee".

I just can't take it anymore, so I'm going to text a message to all of you who waste your precious time and money spouting nonsense into your stupid mini-mobiles with their irritating ring tones.

Okay, is everyone ready?

Bleep, bleep, bleep: U R a pr@

Updated: 11:04 Monday, July 05, 2004