I had a sort of surreal experience in a supermarket the other day.

I was standing in a small queue waiting to be served and the man at the front plonked down one of those pot meals and proffered the right money.

Good, I thought, he's not going to be one of those people who want £40 cash back, two savings stamps and can't find his points card but won't take another one because he knows it's there somewhere. In other words, quick.

But oh no. The assistant glanced at his purchase and said 'it's buy one get one free'.

'Pardon?', he said. 'It's buy one get one free', she repeated. 'You can have another one for nothing. Any flavour'.

'That's all right', he said, 'I only want one'.

'But', she said, slightly less sweetly, 'you don't have to pay for it, it's free.'

'I don't want another one', he said.

' Someone at home might', she said, not giving up.

'I live alone', he snapped.

Then she did give up, although for a moment I thought she might call security and have him charged with wantonly refusing to take his free pot beef casserole in contravention of rule 22 of the supermarket code ie, 'don't look a gift casserole in the mouth'.

When he had slunk out, she turned to the rest of us and said 'he could have given it to someone, couldn't he?'; and being British we all nodded in agreement and tutted loudly.

It's a new phenomena, the buy one get one free lark. Or buy two get the second half price, or for all I know, buy 14 get the eighth one free when there's an R in the month.

I did point out once to a supermarket person that perhaps his company might consider the amazing new ploy of letting us have goods half price rather than giving us a free one. 'It's not the same', he said 'I patiently explained that if I went into the supermarket to buy a packet of cod for my dinner costing £2 and found it was only £1 I could then buy something else as well and therefore would be overwhelmed with the generosity of the firm and keep shopping there. 'We couldn't possibly halve the price of goods, it wouldn't be an economically sound policy', he said confidently. Faced with such stupefying logic one shuts up.

Bare

My problem with buy one get one free is that you can't always do it. I tend to shop late, and by the time I get there the shelves are practically bare and the latest bogof (which stands hereafter for buy one get one free and, I'm sure you will agree, is quite apt) has often been reduced to buy one look in vain for another one to go with it. Somewhere along the line somebody has either failed to work out that if you are selling in twos you should line the shelves with a number of items which can be easily divisible by two or that man's been in again and only bought one

Now having gone into the supermarket with the intention of buying a packet of chicken breasts to turn into a tasty repast for my dinner and having been quite willing to part with £2.99 for it I now feel robbed because there's only one left and I can't get my bogof and I'm not paying £2.99 for one packet when every other chicken breast fancier that day got two. So I buy chops instead.

I have been tempted to ask the shop if I can have the half bogof for half price but one doesn't like to get a reputation for being a cheapskate.

It's the same with 'associate products'. You know, buy one jar of Italian pasta sauce like Mama never made and get a free packet of pasta shells with it. That's fine, they actually go together. But some associate offers seem a little weird. Buy a tin of cocoa and get a free pack of carrots. Buy a treacle sponge and get free jar of Bovril.

I'm being silly really but it's a bit like that and quite often you get to the checkout and discover that the free item accompanying your jar of Vindaloo paste isn't the 234.6 gramme pack which is free, but the 244.6 gramme pack which isn't, and everyone glares at you in the queue. And thinks you're a cheapskate when you query the bill.

There are some days I long for those old fashioned general grocery stores where there were chairs to sit down on and all you had to do was wait for the assistant to stop discussing her mother's varicose vein operation with the person in front of you and you then got your turn at the counter and the shopping was done for you.

This reminds me of one of the worst things I ever did as a child, which in its way was a forerunner of a bogof.

My mother had an account at a little grocery store in the village and at first I would go with her to watch her order the groceries, the prices of which were then entered in a little book and the bill settled monthly.

When I was deemed old enough, at about seven, she would send me with a shopping list and usually added '3d worth of sweets' on the end of it, my reward for going.

Daring

I can't remember when I first hatched the dastardly plan, or what gave me the idea, but one day I slunk into the shop, heart pounding, and read out my own little shopping list. I was smart enough to realise that if the list merely read '3d worth of sweets' I would quickly be sussed out. So I included a few other things, biscuits, bread and the odd tin, plus (and this was really daring) 6d worth of sweets.

It was with a mixture of terror, guilt and triumph that I left the shop the first time bearing my contraband. I think it worked about three times in the next two weeks. Sadly the Al Capone of the village hadn't looked ahead to the day her mother would go in and settle the bill and notice that there were things on it she hadn't ordered.

I came home from school one day to be met with retribution and a swift end to a life of crime. I was hauled round to the shop to apologise in person to the two old ladies who ran it, infinitely the worst punishment of all.

It was a salutary lesson to realise that there's no such thing as free sweets - perhaps that's why I'm none too fond of bogofs.