Spot a shop that's been opened or closed, is a game I've invented to make my shopping trips more interesting. It's a variation of spot the dead actor, a game for elderly film buffs to play when watching television repeats of black and white films screened on bank holidays.

I play spot a shop and rarely fail to see one that's closing down, or a new one that has recently opened.

Last week in bustling Acomb, where I joined the pensioners' weekly pilgrimage to Safeways in search of BOGOFs (buy one and get one free) and other reduced items, nearing their sell by date, I spotted a pawnbroker's shop.

There was no doubt about what it was; the traditional three balls sign had been painted after the owner's name. But what, I thought, was it doing in Acomb? I'd not seen a pawnshop since I had worked in one in Woolwich for a few months in 1944.

Working for a pawnbroker taught me a lot about poverty. It also taught me how to fold and wrap clothing, and parcel up all manner of household items; and how to write three pawn tickets at the same time.

The former skill is now useful at Christmas, but since leaving the pawnshop I've not found a use for the latter.

While gazing in disbelief at something I thought had gone out when the welfare state came in, a little ditty, written by WR Mandale in 1853 and more recently sung by cockney actor Anthony Newley, came to mind:

"Up and down the City Road,

In and out of the Eagle,

That's the way the money goes -

Pop goes the weasel!"

City Road is in London; the Eagle, as you would guess, is a tavern; 'pop' means to 'pawn' and 'weasel' is cockney rhyming-slang for 'weasel and stoat' - coat.

At the time, about which Mandale wrote, a father having a few pints in the Eagle could have strained his family's budget, making it necessary for mother to pawn their Sunday best, to pay the household bills.

I recall, from my days in a pawnshop, hard-up landladies hocking their lodgers' best suits on Monday, and redeeming them on Friday. The lodgers, usually Irish building workers employed on repairing war damage, owned only two suits: one for going out in at weekends, and another to wear for work the rest of the week.

Unless you were employed on war work, this was a time of deprivation and need, and those families existing on servicemen's paltry allowances, made ready clients for pawnbrokers.

Now, more than 50 years on, living in relative prosperity - when the term 'pawnbroker' might suggest a purveyor of pornography - why do we see the return of the three-ball symbol of poverty?

Could it be because many pensioners live in Acomb or, perhaps, the new betting shop that opened there last year has something to do with it. No, not as simple as that, for one's perception of poverty is always relative to the time in which they live.

My philosophical mood changing to one of resignation, I went on my way humming "There's a pawnshop on a corner in..."

Sainsbury's has been having a bad time lately, with their customers being compensated for slipping on grapes and mushrooms. But that's no excuse for the way in which a young airman was treated, when he recently tried to buy a few cans of beer from that celebrated supermarket.

When asked to provide proof of his age he produced his RAF identity card, which bore his photo and date of birth, indicating that he would be 19 on June 6 - a date to remember. "That's not acceptable," said an assistant, "it's not the company's policy to accept military identity cards as proof of age."

I hope somebody at the Ministry of Defence reads this column, and puts them straight.