I like to shop for food. I haven't bothered to mention it to my analyst, I don't necessarily feel any better for having said it in public, and I don't think 'Guys who like to shop for groceries' will be the featured topic on Oprah any time soon. Still, I have noticed that it's a bit unusual for a married guy to willingly go out for the groceries and it's not always wise to stray too far from the herd when the stock market is nervous and teen preachers are casting about for a prime example of social decay.

I'm certainly not into shopping because I'm a 'foody'. In fact most of the time I think that eating is a bore and despair that I have to do it so often. At least a couple of times a day - every day - I get hungry and I know that if I don't eat something... anything, I'll come over faint and vote my conscience instead of the party or something equally rash. And you can't just reach in the fridge and grab the first thing that comes to hand. Oh no. You have to choose something, you might even have to cook it and put it on a plate... forks, knives, the lot, and then you actually have to get it in you somehow.

And don't think that you can just eat mass quantities at one sitting so you won't have to go through it all again later on. I know. I've tried. You just get all bloaty and lethargic... maybe you'll nap for a bit and then, before you know it - and long before you really should - you're hungry again and have to repeat the whole tedious business.

Statasticians have totted up the number of hours the average person sleeps over their lifetime. It's a staggering total and you can't help but think what a waste it is. Well what about that damn chewing and swallowing? Probably years worth. It's depressing. I've often thought I'd be better off just throwing stuff in a blender and drinking all my meals. But I know I'd soon tire of cleaning out the machine and besides, without anything to do my teeth would probably rebel and fall out through lack of use.

The worst part, though, is deciding what to eat. I can't tell you the hours I've stood transfixed - like a bird hypnotized by a cobra - in front of the open refrigerator. It all looks so vaguely repellant that the thought of putting it in my mouth and chewing and chewing and chewing puts me right off. Eventually, i.e. just about the time frostbite sets in, I give up and go away for a while. Then, when I'm absolutely famished, I'll crawl over to the icebox and grab the first thing without mould.

That's one of the reasons I try to shop when I'm hungry. If I've just eaten I don't want to be anywhere near food let alone hoisting it off a shelf and shoving it around in a cart for an hour or so. Sometimes if I absolutely have to get something - for a dinner party or something - I'll have a couple of drinks or so before hand. It's good to have honestly come by that stupefied look so common amongst the other patrons. Besides, I've found it helps to facilitate the selection process. I think store owners count on a certain percentage of their patrons being drunk. Why else would they stock tins of miniature corn on the cob?

When I was much younger my Dad liked to do the shopping and used to take me along me to the store every Saturday morning so I guess that's why, even though I'm not that keen on actually consuming the groceries, I developed a taste for buying them. I suspect that, being a child of the thirties and having known real hunger, he felt comforted amongst so much plenty. Of course that's only one theory. It could be that, as a military man, he admired the orderliness of a supermarket - nice, neat rows of tins that didn't talk back, vegetables on parade, a respectable polish on the fruit - in fact, everything was always they way things never were in a home with four barely domesticated kids.

During my teens it seemed to me that he took the whole military thing way too seriously. Sometimes, if I was feeling especially hard done by or perhaps merely uncharitable, I used to imagine him in downtown Toronto going nuts trying to get everybody to form up in ranks before they crossed the street. "Hey you - Pinafore Pants - Stay in line!"

Dad and I, nevertheless, share our views about a full fridge. Even if I can't bear the thought of actually wrenching something from it's innards and introducing it to the digestive processes, I feel better just by knowing it's there. Tinned things are even better, in a way. And this you can trace directly to Nikita Kruschev.

Remember him at the UN shouting "We will bury you," and banging his shoe on the desk? Well Dad took him seriously and built a bomb shelter in the basement. I suppose it really wasn't much as these things go. We ran out of plywood and had to use old curtains for part of a wall and even though they were heavy curtains, I feel it a good thing that they were never tested by anything that is routinely measured in megatons.

We used to keep stocks of tinned food down there in case we had to stay the required seven hundred years for the radiation levels to fade to a low hum. We also stored toys, books and board games in our sanctuary. During a lull in the bomb scare it served as a laboratory where my friends and I used to experiment with gunpowder and plastic battleships.

I don't suppose we were any safer than those of our friends that didn't have bomb shelters, but we'd at least done our part for civil defence and felt some grim satisfaction in that. It was good to know that should the worst happen we had a lifetime supply of tinned bully beef and an almost-complete Monopoly set ready and waiting. Also, should the military might of Uncle Nicki or his descendents come to be directed at our fortress we could bean them with it. So whenever I do the shopping I always put in a few cans of soup - just in case the cold war starts to heat up again.

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