Picture the scene: a group of three people go to Tesco in York on Saturday morning and buy, amongst other things, three bottles of wine. At the checkout - one of those do-it-yourself ones - the wine brings up the message that its sale needs authorising. Fair enough. Up comes this jaqui, and she says she’s going to have to ask how old each person is. They tell her; the youngest is mid-twenties, the oldest mid-thirties.

“Have you got any ID?” asks this jaqui.

No-one does. Only university cards, which are neither use nor ornament when it comes to buying alcohol from Tesco.

“It’s Tesco’s new policy,” she said, when questioned about why someone in their thirties is asked for ID. “If you look under 30, we have to ask for ID.”

“Where does it say that?” asks one of the group.

“There,” said the jaqui, pointing to a sign hidden round the corner from the check-out screen.

“But you’re wearing an if-you-look-under-21 badge,” said another group member.

“Oh,” says the jaqui. “The policy doesn’t start until next week,” she continues. “But we’re doing it this week.”

There was much mind-boggling at this point.

The group ask for the manager. A supervisor comes along. Same story.

“We can’t authorise the sale until you show us some ID.”

Eventually, the staff members are persuaded that all members of said group wouldn’t be holding university cards if they weren’t over 18, and the wine was purchased.

I’m going to start shopping at Asda. I’m not taking my passport to Tesco every time I want to buy some booze!

The sofa-bed has arrived! The poor old bed-sofa is sitting on the other side of the room, all disconockerated, and looking extremely sorry for itself. And no wonder: it’s to be relegated to the garage, poor thing.

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We are getting a shiny new sofa-bed to replace the bed-sofa.

We went to DFS (on Newmarket Road), which was having one of its sales, and found a nice, comfy sofa-bed, advertised at half price, but it was actually less than that. We shopped around in Furniture Village and SCS (both on Newmarket Road also), but there was nothing we fancied and nothing as comfy as the DFS one. We tootled back to DFS and promptly bought it.

The bed-sofa will be relegated to the garage. Poor thing.

We have a bed-sofa. No, not a sofa-bed. A bed-sofa.

I want a proper sofa. The Hubster grumbles.

We were talking about Wiis in the pub last night. Damo and Ang have just got one, The Hubster wants one. Ang said they’re a lot cheaper now, so I looked on Amazon, and there they are, all reduced:

Reduced by a whole Earth penny.

“Are you going to Strawberry Fair?” I sang tunelessly to The Hubster yesterday.

“If I must,” he grumped, “but they don’t sell strawberries.”

When we got there, around 11.30 a.m. via a trip to Tesco for Irn Bru for The Hubster and Jamaican Ginger Beer, which appears to come in handy small bottles now, for so fewer pennies than other pop, the first thing we noticed when we got onto the common proper were loads and loads of food stalls. As we meandered, they became more interspersed with clothes stalls selling your usual tie-dye, hippy, grungy-type stuff. There was also jewellery, which was also of the same style, which was perfect because I finally managed to successfully replace my earrings, one of which I lost whilst on honeymoon. I tried to get some from the normal Cambridge Market, but, although I did buy three pairs, none were the right ones. I’ve worn the same style for over ten years now.

We decided upon goat curry to eat for dinner (aka lunch) from one of the Caribbean stalls. Very tasty, it was, although there was far too much food for my tiny tum. (I’m serious - it’s like a reverse TARDIS in there.) We also found a bed-spread stall, which was good because I wanted a new one for the bed-sofa in the living room. We got a black one with some sort of crazy psychedelic mushroom and snakes (but no badgers) and another one which is tie-dyed blue and has elephants on it. Maybe snakes as well.

We went to the beer tent, which had some interesting-looking bitters, but it was far too hot for bitter, so we had lager instead. (Lager-drinkers!) The other end of the beer tent was being called the acoustic tent, where we listened to the tail end of of a song at the tail end of an act. We wandered off when they’d finished to sit on the grass near what appeared to be the main stage to drink our beer.

A bit more wandering brought us to the lost kids tent; we weren’t sure if the lost kids went in the tent or in the nearby cage with a boingy floor, which some may have called mini trampolines.

I saw a sign on the grass advertising strawberries and cream, which I couldn’t resist pointing out to The Hubsicle:

“See,” I said pointing to the strawberries and cream sign,” you can get strawberries.”

“Hmph,” he said, and I didn’t dare ask if we could get some!

Around 2.30, The Hubster’s whinging became unbearable, so we headed home, via the Old Spring, for refreshments because it was really very hot, and some of us were getting sunburnt. As ever.

I seem to have missed it this year, so we’re going to have it next Tuesday instead.

I blame the fact that shops start putting seasonal stuff in too early for everything except pancake day. I went to Tesco on Monday, saw they had flour and lemon juice on special offer, and thought, “Oh, it must be pancake day soon, but it can’t be this week, because they’ve only just put the stuff out,” although how I would know that I don’t know, because C has been the one going to Tesco most recently. Still, I blame the shops, damn them.