I WAS just leaving the house when I heard the words every man dreads: “If you’re going into town, can you pop into the supermarket for few things.”

Slowly, I turned and accepted the proffered list, and with a heavy heart, went on my way. This never ends well.

Arriving at the supermarket, I examined the list - not too long, that’s good. I looked at the first item - lemons. I knew we were having a birthday dinner that night and paella was on the menu, so it gave me a few clues.

I started the familiar process: Lemons, hmmm, I wonder how many? I’ve seen quite a lot of lemons in previous paellas, so quite a few? Hmm, nets of four - is four enough? Dunno, but they don’t go off, not expensive, let’s get eight to be on the safe side.

Next - a tricky one - peppers times two. They were in packs of two. Does she mean two peppers or two packs? Best get two packs - wish I could buy three.

Okay, next is chorizo. Easy enough, off to the sausage fridge. Hmm, Lincolnshire, pork, Cornish, black pudding but no chorizo. Okay, let’s do the ham. It just says ham, so no idea of quantity but let’s get two packets. Oh, look, there’s the chorizo, not sure what it’s doing there but all good. Another tick.

Finally - frozen peas. No idea of quantity but it’s plural, so must be more than one. Look how many peas there are - and 500g, 1kg or 3kg packets! Blimey, well there are few of us, let’s do two packets of 1kg, what can go wrong?

As it turned out, quite a bit - I got the items correct but the amounts were completely out. Hopefully, I won’t get asked again!