TODAY (as I write this) is not only St Valentine's Day but the day when chaos is supposed to reign with the introduction of compulsory chip and pin use when purchasing things. It's no doubt a coincidence that February 14 was chosen, but I bet it's going to give an awful lot of men an awfully good excuse as to why they haven't bought a card, flowers, chocolates or other delights for the 'day of love' as it is sickeningly called by all and sundry. Even me, when I write advertisement features. That excuse will universally be 'Sorry dear, but I forgot my pin number and didn't have enough cash on me and the nasty supermarket wouldn't let me pay unless I had my number.' Don't believe a word of it girls. Now, as regular readers of this column have read before, a dear late colleague of mine used to react violently to the word chaos when he came across it in copy he was sub-editing, banging the desk and shouting that chaos meant the complete upheaval of the universe and should therefore not be used to describe a minor traffic jam in the centre of Tavistock. Nor, he would have said, should it be used in connection with not being able to buy half a pound of butter and a pack of hot cross buns because we can't remember four digits in the right order. So I use the word with caution, but certainly the signs are that there is going to be 'trouble at mill' as they don't say up north. It's difficult to criticise chip and pin because it's actually a good idea. It's there for our own good, to protect our bank accounts and our cards. In theory we should be downright grateful to the nice banks for thinking up such a clever scheme. But will we be? Not on your life. Certainly not late on a Friday night when we're patiently waiting in a supermarket queue while some old lady in front tries in vain to remember her number and then has to admit defeat and have her shopping removed from her before leaving empty handed. It will be worse than standing behind those irritating women who don't bother to get their purse out until the assistant has rung up all their purchases and they have packed them all away. Then they dive into a voluminous handbag, juggle a few hundred objects about until they find what they are looking for and remove their card or money in slow motion. Meanwhile, we who have used a basket instead of a trolley because we laughingly think we'll get through the tills more quickly have developed muscle strain from holding an overladen basket. Of course, a lot of people won't be able to remember their number. Of course, they'll have to write it down somewhere and keep it right next to their card. Which is what you are told never to do. Or they could do what a huge number of people do, choose an easy to remember code. According to recent survey a majority of people use their birth dates. Not something a thief would think of almost immediately is it? And it's not just one card for most people. So do you have a separate number for each, or the same one? The latter makes fraud easier but the former may prompt a nervous breakdown in the newsagents. Then there's the worry of someone watching you entering the number and noting it down. So we all stand back and look every other way but down while someone punches in the pin. However, there are apparently some enterprising crooks who arms themselves with powerful binoculars and focus on the pin machine, note the number down and then steal the cards outside the shop. So, if you spot someone in the Co-op lurking in front of the deli counter with a pair of binoculars, just remember, they're probably not bird-watchers. It's all a fait accompli, of course. It is an exercise which comes under the heading of 'for the benefit of our customers' whether the customers like it or not. All this brings to mind an incident in Cyprus a few years ago. We are not among the first to get chip and pin, probably about one of the last in Europe and Cyprus had it before us. In a supermarket outside Limassol I was lining up to pay for a trolley load of goods (I always go mad in foreign supermarkets) when the girl behind the counter said: 'Yo peen' Dredging through my limited Greek for some kind of inkling of what she wanted I looked at my daughter. 'You're going to love this', she said. 'She wants your pin number.' I looked in vain for the machine but there wasn't one. 'She wants you to tell her your pin number', said my daughter. I did. In English. She then translated it into Greek and yelled it out at the top of her voice. There was, apparently, only one machine in the store and it was down the end of the shop. No need for binoculars there then. Still on supermarkets, have you ever noticed how supermarket car parks seem to turn seemingly normal people into kamikaze pedestrians? Park anywhere in supermarket car park, even an empty one, and just as you are about to reverse out you find somebody walks behind you. One second there's nobody in sight, the next someone is appears in the rear view mirror, having apparently taken a considerable detour to walk right behind your car. And here's another. Morrisons has a zebra crossing to help such people not get flatpacked as they leave the store. So why do some people, pushing trolleys laden with enough food to feed a regiment, always cross about a foot away from the crossing. They obviously expect you to stop anyway but I always want to lean out and tell them I'll probably get in a lot less trouble if I mow them down off the crossing than on it.

On a return from from four days off last week, I found a letter waiting for me from a gentleman in Looe. He was following up on an earlier column where I bemoaned the problems of de-icing the car. What!, I thought, as I read a letter which seemed to have been written by a founder member of the male chauvinist piggy club. The sort of person who, years ago, used to pat you on the head, and not always the head, and call you dearie. It was a step-by-step guide to how I should manage the de-icing job just the way men do so I could get back to more important things like attending to my make-up and nail varnish. Ok, Hugh, I didn't read the footnote first, so I failed to get the joke until my blood temperature had shot up a notch or two. But then it was Monday morning.

Finally, I was so sorry for that poor Dutch driver in his giant lorry who got stuck in a village lane. Been there, done that, Mr Verhoek driver. Or rather nearly done it. The place, entrance to Cawsand/ Kingsand. The decision. Drive on a little and you're sure to find a parking space. Should have known that this is the same as not wanting to stop at a filling station on the other side of the road but to wait to find one on your side of the road. Result, nailbiting 43-mile crawl to next filling station on teaspoon of petrol. This time nailbiting drive through narrower and narrower lanes noting no turning points and lots of pedestrians who are going to have a jolly good laugh seeing someone trying to reverse a mile and a half through crowded streets. Terror mounts at realisation that it's nearly time for the school bus, and school buses and I have met on many an unhappy occasion. Remember that children don't have any qualms about sniggering and making rude gestures at sweating, red-faced female driver lurching into ditches and that sweating red faced etc really shouldn't reply in kind. Terror mounts as road narrows even more, but then, oh sweet joy and thanks to the god of non- reversing as it opens into village square, where a brewery lorry is kindly waiting and, had it been 20 seconds later, would have been met head-on a few yards round the corner.