There was a long queue in the Tesco Metro for the tills, but only a short one for the self service tills. Keeping the queue short was a chap with extreme body odour, and trousers held up by string. I stood as far back as I could but just as I could stand the stench no more, about sixty seconds later, a till came free. And I made the mistake of pointing this out to the chap (he was standing there with a basket of groceries after all).

Was I mad? Couldn't I see the long queue? No, I tried to explain and if I was more awake I'd have realised my folly, that's the queue for the cigarette counter. I meant that till there. What, you want me to give up my space in this queue to go stand in that long one over there? He then began to pace up and down the store, so I dashed over to the till and scanned my items all the while he paced up and down shouting at me that clearly I had drunk too much milk today, as I scanned in my All Pro Soya yoghurts since I am now on a no diary diet. And a no sugar diet. And a no potatoes. No tomatoes. No wheat. Diet. All this to help with the joint pain, which the drug treatment I'm about to start will also help. Hopefully. Fingers crossed (when I can cross them).

The other weekend I spent a lot of time queuing in what became known as meet the neighbours day. A water main for our entire area burst, and as luck would have it the main was right under a gas main. It took a day and a half to fix and in the meantime we all queued at the water truck with our buckets (for flushing the toilet) and bottles and kettles and anything else we could carry water in. See, this is why we don't know our neighbours anymore - we don't do the same things anymore. We don't go to the same local shop to queue for our groceries. Or the same fishmongers to queue for our fish. Or butchers. And the local supermarket is superb at handling lots of customers so you rarely have a queue longer than two people at a till. Not long enough to get to know anyone at all.

The Sci Fi channel has been playing Stargate the movie quite a lot recently, which is great because as an NTL/Virgin media subscriber I no longer have Stargate SG1 repeats on tap, twice a day and again on Sky Two, to flick on whenever I get bored of anything else on TV. Have any other cable subscribers made the move to Sky? If you did, how was the experience - is it messy getting the dish put up?

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