Family Life, by Bini McCall

We stood with a trolley full of shopping, freezing ourselves to death and waiting for a taxi.

There was too much shopping to manage on the bus so we didn't have much option other than to wait until our cab turned up.

This was the second weekend in a row this had happened and I decided it was not what I wanted to spend my Saturdays doing in the future.

I would much prefer to be curled up by the fire with a book or go for a nice healthy walk with the dog in the park.

So I decided weekend trips to the supermarket would have to go.

I would find an easier way of replenishing the fridge in the future.

Consequently I decided to start doing my supermarket shopping online.

I have never done this before.

Like most people I am wary about giving my financial details to complete strangers, particularly complete strangers' computers.

However, a few people at work had done it and said they thought it was great and made life much easier.

So I decided to take their advice and go for it.

I logged on and registered, which was easy, then browsed the virtual aisles, ticking the boxes of everything I wanted.

My friend Linda at work says online shopping is better because you tend to only buy what's on your list which is stuff you need whereas when you go to a real-life supermarket you end up buying all sorts of extra things you don't really need or want and spend more money.

This is true, especially if you take someone like daughter with you as she makes periodic trips to the clothing and CD sections, only reappearing with a "must have"

T-shirt or similar when you've reached the biscuit aisle so she can ask for some of "those really nice scrummy double choc chip luxury cookies, please".

These cookies are really nice, I admit, but, as you only get about five in the pack, they last about five seconds in our house.

When you shop online you can just order the large family bumper biscuit bag which is much cheaper and lasts longer.

I am saving money already.

Anyway, it was all very easy and the chap turned up to deliver it the next day at the time they said he would, which was impressive all by itself.

I am definitely converted.

While I have been virtual shopping, daughter has been managing to lose virtually everything she owns.

In the last month this has included her school sweatshirt, a new watch and a pencil case containing her brand new fountain pen.

The sweatshirt was not her fault, apparently, because she had left it somewhere and when she went back it wasn't there.

"Where did you leave it?" I asked.

"Dunno."

"How did you know where to look then?"

"Well, I just looked where I'd been."

The watch wasn't her fault because it had come undone somewhere in school and fallen off her wrist while she wasn't looking.

It didn't get handed in so must have been picked up by someone else.

This, said daughter, just showed how dishonest people were because if she had found a watch in school she would have handed it in.

The pencil case wasn't her fault either because she thought she'd left it in the English room last Friday.

That it took her until Wednesday to go and look did not impress me at all.

Then she decided she may have taken her pencil case out of her school bag on the bus on Friday.

"But I've told you not to do homework on the bus," I said.

"I wasn't doing homework. I just said I may have taken it out then, probably just to look at it or something."

"Well, why would you do that?" I asked "Dunno," she said.

We have definitely entered the teenage years, I think.