Not shopping

Here's an idea to waste an hour or two. Get the new Argos catalogue (as Bill Bailey calls it, the Laminated Catalogue of Dreams....) or go online here. Find the five daftest things they sell and then congratulate yourself on not having spent money on them or found space for them in your life.

Here are mine:

1. A Dr Who TARDIS wardrobe (actually this is quite clever). Make tidying your room an adventure in time-travelling BBC marketing:

2. A pink gear stick and handbrake cover for the car. Express your zany individualism with some gaudy ill-fitting plastic stuff for your Nissan Micra:

3. A number 1 Dad pendant. Show your love with a piece of football-related costume jewellery:

4. A POWERbreathe 'insipratory' muscle trainer. Make breathing harder!:

5. A Manhattan skyline trolley-case. Fail to capture the image of a transatlantic jet-setter with a picture of some large buildings on a bag:

Once, while waiting for an order to be fetched at an Argos, I tried to fill the time by wondering aloud to the person serving if the name of the store had been chosen because of the Greek for 'lazy'. (A lazy way to shop, I suppose.) She didn't know and, in fact, seemed a bit upset. Looking back, I think now that perhaps she thought I was commenting on the service.