There is plenty about modern life to cause celebration and aggravation in equal measure. Thankfully, old hand Christopher Howse and young gun Guy Kelly are here to dissect the way we live now...

Sales of shopping baskets on wheels have soared, retailers say, because younger people use them to avoid hurting their backs and shoulders carrying shopping. I was thinking of getting one myself, and will not be dissuaded by the danger of being mistaken for a follower of fashion.

First, could we get the terminology right? These are not trolleys. A supermarket trolley has four wheels, one of which drags it off course, like Boris Johnson. Nor are they granny carts. Americans call supermarket trolleys ‘carts’, as online-shopping checkouts bear witness. They aren’t caddies either. Caddies hold tea. Americans call golfers’ caddy-carts ‘caddies’ for short, but we need not.

No, we’re talking about shopping baskets on wheels. Shopping baskets of any kind almost became extinct because supermarkets provided handy carrier bags. Now supermarkets compete in supplying bags that are expensive and impractical. Those still made of plastic have handles that stretch into cheesewires as you heave the shopping home. Paper carriers from Marks & Spencer combine rasping handles with a dangerous affinity for puddles at bus stops.

The big decision is whether to buy a wicker basket on wheels or one covered with tartan fabric. Both used to be regarded with annoyance when under the control of old ladies. I don’t want to stir up animosity against old ladies, adding yet another task to the burden of Police Scotland enforcing the Hate Crime Act, but they did have a tendency to block pedestrian flow. Younger people have since shown how it can be done far more devastatingly with a backpack, which deceives the wearer about the space he takes up.

For me, wicker has almost won the day. I have in mind the design that rests upon a stout wooden prop resembling the lower part of Long John Silver’s wooden leg. Wicker baskets are heavier, but the weight can be turned against the enemy (obstructive pedestrians in clogged London streets) by using the contraption as a battering ram. I feel it could make me the shopping equivalent of the captain of a trireme at the Battle of Salamis.

Fans of this column – or at least the editor who has to look over it, sigh, and take out the libel – will recall that I moved house recently. Despite it seeming as if I’d exhausted all the cons about my new area, I have left one out: our house is at the top of a massive hill.

This is, in and of itself, not dreadful. Like Roger Daltrey, we can see for miles and miles and miles and miles up there. The laundry dries on the line faster than we can get the pegs on. And I briefly considered installing a ship’s quarterdeck on the roof, like Admiral Boom in Mary Poppins, to become the greatest neighbourhood watchman of all, but then I was reminded we’re only renting the basement.

Given we’re in a dead zone for large supermarkets and don’t have a car, the hill means completing The Big Shop is now a challenge that could be featured between the keg toss and truck pull in The World’s Strongest Man. Especially if we’re out of Schweppes tonics.

In lockdown, when we were permitted to visit Lidl once a month or face being tasered, I shopped with a 65-litre backpack. But those were, you’ll remember, unprecedented times. I went back to tote bags as soon as No 10, which preferred suitcases for booze anyway, gave the green light.

As I’ve staggered home red-faced and apoplectic lately, I’ve wondered if I need to bring back the oversized bag, if only to avoid a potential Jack and Jill situation. That other high-ground-dwelling child influencer, Peppa Pig, makes living on top of a hill look so easy, but she barely lifts a trotter around the house as it is, so she is not about to spend £80 on groceries and lug them back. A bad example.

Regrettably, the bag is unwieldy in narrow aisles, so I’ve been led to the humiliating option: what Christopher calls a ‘shopping basket on wheels’. Or a ‘sholley’, which I’ve heard is now the preferred term. (I like it, it sounds like Sean Connery trying to apologise.)

As research, I’ve been watching those shopping trolleys. I have tripped on them as they’ve scuttled by. I have regarded the ease with which their owners buy tonics. And I’ve reached an unavoidable conclusion: we will just have to move.

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