aitrose has a brilliant system which allows you to scan your shopping with a zapper as you walk round. “Quick Check” is wonderful but it only works (a) if the shopper behaves honourably and (b) if he remembers that scanning his purchases is not the same as paying for them. That crucial point about payment slipped my mind last Saturday.

It works like this. Once you’ve registered, you get a hand-held scanner, like a Buck Rogers sonicray gun. You point it at the bar code on items and pull the trigger. This fires a red laser beam, which reads the bars and tots up the cost. As you amble round, you pop your (intended) purchases in bags. If a child should zap random cans of rice pudding, just delete them on the handset screen.

It is handy because you cut out queuing. At the end simply hand in your zapper and pay at a terminal. Cynics might say that Quick Check means Waitrose can harvest data about us. But who cares if they know how many pears we buy? Obviously it is possible to march your shopping out of the store without paying. Some purchases might set off the alarms, but in my case none did and it wasn’t until I was nearly at my house that my wife called to say Waitrose would like me to go back and pay for my shopping.

I felt embarrassed by my foolishness and after dropping off the children I rushed back. I didn’t protest my innocence because the more vehemently you insist you “didn’t mean to”, the shiftier you look. I wasn’t exactly worried, because I knew it was an honest mistake and the polite man who’d rung the house had said: “We saw the children with him and thought he looked distracted.” But they might have taken me for one of those middle-class kleptomaniacs, who probably look plausible too.

My excuse is this: when I’d finished shopping I took the zapper to the terminal to pay. But one item had not scanned. So I asked a member of staff to input the price. That bit of business, a sort of transaction, lulled me into thinking: that’s it, we’re done – and I focused on getting the three tired children out with the bags.

“We don’t think you did it on purpose,” a nice woman reassured me. They took my payment and checked that no black mark was put on my account. Still, it was embarrassing – and who’s to say they don’t have a scintilla of doubt about me now?

Automation is all very well, but some things can’t be left to machines. ŠIn a world of limitless choice, people grow slower and less decisive. On a café visit, the two men in front of me in the queue at the counter couldn’t make up their minds about anything.

Green salad with the lentil and feta bake? Erm, not sure. French dressing with that? Agonies of dithering. The waitress’s vinaigrette jug teetered over the lettuce.

Perhaps life was easier when the options were restricted to cheese and pickle or corned beef. Except that protracted decision-making is often a social ritual, relishing the moment, filling dead air with chat. At its most boring, though, it reminds me of Jeffrey Bernard’s Mr and Mrs Backbone of England.

The Backbones appear in one of Bernard’s most brilliant Spectator columns (lifted by Keith Waterhouse for a scene in his hit play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell). Jeff is moping, nursing an aperitif in a deserted Berkshire pub one chilly lunchtime when in come the Backbones, clapping their hands and making “Brrr” noises.

Loudly, they go round the houses about what to drink. “What’ll you have darling?” “Ooh let’s see, what shall I have?” “Why don’t you have a whisky mac, darling?” “Yes why don’t I have a whisky mac.” It goes on in this vein while Jeff seethes: “I stared gloomily ahead at a row of bottles, terrified that I might be dragged into the badinage. (It’s always good protection against the Backbones to look miserable.)” ŠWe ran the obituary last week of Peter Elias, a Swordfish navigator, who wrote a gripping account of his role in the hunt for Bismarck. The pictures showed his unflappability: one, a caricature drawn by a chum, has the navigator holding a mug of beer that’s casually spilling its contents.

That generation knew how to draw. Many of them picked up the principles of draughtsmanship from school, as part of a general education, enabling them to produce passable sketches and even paintings.

I myself am pathetically unskilled when it comes to DIY and home improvements, but I don’t mind that; I do wish I could draw. What pleasure it must give. One day I’d love to learn.