More years ago than I care to remember I was playing cricket for the village. The team's players, having put the opposition to the sword, were proposing to adjourn to the local pub for a bar meal.

One of the then newly-married players was having a cheerful argument with his wife about whether a meal out constituted food, in which case it came out of the housekeeping, and she paid, or entertaining, in which case it came out of another budget and he paid.

All these years later I cannot remember the conclusion to which they came. They must have resolved it and the other arguments, more and less serious, over the intervening 30 or so years, because they are still married.

During those years we have now reached the stage where expenditure on food has fallen to a bit less than ten per cent of household expenditure.

At the same time growth in the number of meals taken outside the home shows little sign of slowing.

In the nature of things, food eaten outside the home costs more than a meal prepared at the home.

It is a sign of increasing affluence.

Expenditure on alcohol is rising so fast that it is possible, with a fair degree of certainty, to predict when the lines will cross, and we will be spending more on drinking than on eating.

My friends' discussion came to my mind the other day. I have been working on a stall at Harrogate Spring Flower Show for the past few days.

Entry to the show varied from £12 on the first day, reducing for the subsequent three days.

A huge number of stalls were selling flowers, plants and every conceivable sort of garden ornament and decoration. There was no sign of any shortage of money.

It seems there are different sorts of shopping and different times when people spend money. There is the weekly 'food' shop, when shoppers go reluctantly to the supermarket. They want to get the necessary items for refuelling themselves.

There is no pleasure in the exper-ience, or certainly very little, and it needs to be out of the way as quickly and as cheaply as reasonably possible.

Sometimes this takes place at the weekend, but often it happens on a weekday evening, either on the way home from work or sometimes as a special expedition.

It is shopping as a necessary evil.

The shopping experience at the other end of the scale is much more likely to take place at the weekend or on days off from work.

It is to do with the things that we all actually want to do, the things we would spend time on if money were not an object. So we can spend time browsing.

We can talk to the person selling the product, and actually enjoy what we are doing.

We can look forward to the consuming of the product, whether it takes the form of goods or services.

This sort of shopping is much less price sensitive.

We decide what we want and, hopefully within the limits of our bank accounts or our credit card limits, we go and buy it.

It is shopping as a leisure activity. It is a pleasure.

Napoleon's remark that Britain was a nation of shopkeepers was supposed to be an insult, although the shopkeepers won in that war.

The war the small shopkeepers and those who supply them are in danger of losing this time around is somehow to get some pleasure back into shopping.

Updated: 10:40 Tuesday, April 30, 2002