I AM not a Sudoku person. I don't have the patience for puzzles or the application to construct a phrase out of a pyramid of letters.

You either like that kind of thing or you don't. This aversion was reinforced when the husband tried to distract me with the quick crossword during labour. I gave him a short two-word answer. I expect you can fill in the blanks.

I know I ought to do puzzles to protect against Alzheimer's, but I'm relying on our stainless steel saucepans instead. The sad fact is, my brain doesn't do logic. I'll never be MENSA material, but what the heck: your IQ doesn't much matter these days, it's your LQ that people rate you on apparently.

Determining your 'LQ', or 'Lifestyle Quotient', involves filling in a simple on-line questionnaire on MSN. Questionnaires I can do; I'm a sucker for those women's magazine surveys that ask, 'Do You Have a Bad-Girl Side?' (just 'slightly sinful' it transpires) or 'What's Your Passion Personality?' (not going into that one on the grounds that the husband might read it).

One of the reasons I indulge in daft quizzes is because, generally speaking, they confirm what you want to hear about yourself. I was mortified, therefore, when the results of my LQ test came to 53 - the UK average is 105 - rendering me a 'style slob' on a par with Vicky Pollard. And that's despite having a gym membership and lying about how often I get my hair done.

Now, I have always perceived myself as a high-maintenance kind of gal. Clearly, despite the small fortune I spend on Clarins products, I am not consuming enough. I have no designer clothes, rarely buy DVDs, do not play golf or employ a cleaner, haven't redecorated since we moved to our mid-terraced house in 1999 and have only taken one holiday in the past eight years (and that was on the SeaCat to Jersey). On the LQ scale of luxuries, I'm a loser.

Am I bovvered? Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no. Seriously, no. High-Maintenance Kate has always been in conflict with Eco-Friendly Kate, and at least the dearth of holidays means I'm carbon neutral where flights are concerned. Distressed as I am by having anything in common with Little Britain's lardy loudmouth, I'm proud of having curtailed my consumerist ways.

Admittedly, this has been as much due to lack of money as it has to any kind of environmental agenda, but all that has changed. It's not easy being green, as the BBC2 series says, and while I am not about to build my own waterwheel or stop shaving my legs, my commitment to a greener lifestyle has been given an unexpected boost by living in the Bishopthorpe Road Exclusion Zone.

In case you haven't yet sat in the traffic jams on Nunnery Lane, this zone has been created by Yorkshire Water sinking a massive new sewage pipe outside Bishopthorpe Road shops, necessitating the road's closure. From where we live, to get 100 metres down the road requires a tedious 15-minute diversion (if you don't take the rat-run, which I have banned myself from doing; the through traffic has made road-crossing a nightmare on school mornings and I can't disapprove of others and then do it myself).

The tailbacks make it such a hassle to get anywhere that I've abandoned my supermarket trips and taken to using the local shops more frequently instead. I've found it a much more efficient way of shopping. You buy what you need, there's less wastage because you haven't got a fortnight-old, bought-on-a-whim aubergine mouldering in the back of the fridge, it takes less time and there's less packaging in the form of those ubiquitous plastic trays to dispose of.

The result is that I am now a terrifically Smug Shopper, and have the jute carrier to prove it. Just this morning I bought locally produced sausages at the butcher's, veggies and Yorkshire ice-cream from the greengrocer's, bread and cheese from the deli, toiletries from the chemist and donated some jumpers to the charity shop, during which we held a shouted conversation over the noise of the diggers.

I trotted home past the smelly sewage pipe thinking, 'I could get used to this' (the shopping, not the pong). I'm not sure if I could break the supermarket habit entirely - maybe once a month for tins and toilet rolls - but it's a start. And it's had other advantages: I'm hardly using the car at all. If it wasn't that I needed it to go to the gym to salvage a few vital LQ points, I'd give it up completely.

Personally, I'd be happy if the whole of York became one great traffic exclusion zone, a bit like Center Parcs only with better, cheaper public transport and free cycle hire. I know that's not very logical, not while we all think we can carry on buying stuff and living like we do and not having to make any real compromises, but then I'm a romantic. I still believe there must be some puzzlers who can figure it all out.

Updated: 08:53 Saturday, April 22, 2006