And are you sure the full-fat version is a good idea, Ma'am?

My way of passing the time when standing in the ‘express aisle’ – a misnomer if ever I heard one - of a supermarket is to judge the lives of other customers based on the contents of their shopping.

This isn’t difficult, most of the time. The be-suited woman holding six Lean Cuisines and a pint of skim milk obviously lives alone, works long hours, spends a lot of time in the gym and never drinks. The young man holding a packet of mince, one onion and a packet of spaghetti is trying to impress a new girlfriend, and has forgotten the pasta sauce.

Hey, it keeps me amused.

I confessed this to a friend (whom, I suspect, will soon need a pseudonym. Polly hasn’t forgiven me yet, though, so I’m treading with caution) who told me that he did the same thing, only possibly more judgmentally. That, of course, made me wonder how many other people do this. And I got a bit paranoid.

So yesterday, finding myself needing a few things from the store, I employed a cunning trick.See if you can make a judgmental call about me based on the following:

One packet of Nurofen
One packet of Panadol
One bar of chocolate*
One glossy magazine
One carton of dishwashing powder.

You can’t, can you See what I did there? With the clever red herring grocery item?

I know. I'm an idiot. I wouldn't mind, but we didn't need dishwashing powder.

I’m off to Melbourne to render us destitute this evening, by the way, and I am still laptopless, so no blogging till Monday.

Have a good weekend.

*I haven’t bought chocolate in months. Jesus. You take your eye off the shelves for a second and the world goes crazy. You know you can get cookie dough Kit Kats now? The hell?