I've reached that certain age when certain little things peeve me. My wife (bless her) tells me that it's the Age of the Grumpy Old Man.

I thought you might like to hear one of those things.

I’m in the newsagents. I’ve bought a daily paper. I take it to the cash desk to pay.

Where there is a long queue of people waiting to pay for their goods.

I join the queue.

At the front is a lady clutching two items. The cashier takes them and rings up the prices. “That’ll be £1.54 please” she says.

“Oh right” says the customer and proceeds to rummage in a handbag the size of Asia for her purse.

“I know it’s in here somewhere” she says to no-one in particular.

The queue gets longer and we look at each other and lift our eyes to heaven.

After a few minutes fruitless fumbling she empties the entire contents of her handbag on the counter. More rummaging unearths the purse.

She opens the purse. It has 134 compartments some so secret that they housed the Dead Sea Scrolls. She starts to trawl through them.

More minutes pass.

The queue gets longer.

Muttering breaks out in the queue.

Questions spring to my mind.

Did this good lady not realise that she might have to pay for the items she had purchased?

Could she not have got her money ready whilst we she was waiting in the queue instead of waiting until she got to the cash desk?

More minutes pass.

For some reason the words “kill”, “exterminate” and “annihilate” spring to mind.

At last there is a cry of triumph from the front of the queue and the lady customer waves a £50 note. “Here it is” she cries.

The queue visibly brightens.

“Have you got anything smaller” asks the cashier.

“Oh, I don”t know” answers the lady “let me have a look”.

The queue assumes all the characteristics of a lynch mob.

I’m now considering ways of causing death that even Vlad the Impaler had thought too sadistic.

The cashier quickly detects the atmosphere and says “No, no, that’s alright, I’ve got change”.

She hands over the change and the lady departs completely oblivious to the imaginary arrows sticking in her back.

The next lady steps up to the cash desk with her three purchases.

The cashier rings them up and says “That’ll be £2.13 please”

“Oh right” says the lady and proceeds to rummage in a handbag the size of North America for her purse………………………..

It’s either kill, cry or leave!

I leave.

And watch the news on TV.