BETTER now, thanks. But it's been a bad one. I've been off with a virus, but not just any virus, a hand-selected, free-range, body-invading beauty of a virus that sticks to your lungs like Velcro. This man flu is a hell of a thing, you know.

If you heard a strange, unearthly sound in York over the past few days it was me coughing. And I apologise if you lost any roof tiles, had plates falling from the wall or found the cat hiding in the deepest cupboard, I couldn't help it.

In between hawking away like a professional smoker en route to his own cremation, and feeling very sorry for myself as only a sick man can, I clean forgot to come up with an idea for this week's column.

This can be a tricky state of affairs because, despite appearances, it doesn't write itself, you know. Looking back I realise that is the second "you know" already this week (or the third if you count that one), but I've not been well and a spot of sympathy wouldn't go amiss.

The big topic of the moment is smoking, but Francine Clee touched on that last night, so I won't go there, except to wonder about what state I would be in if I'd not given up on my teenage habit of smoking a curly pipe filled with aromatic Dutch tobacco. That description of what I smoked isn't a euphemism or anything, but the literal, if embarrassing, truth.

There hasn't been smoke near these lungs for more than 25 years, although I do keep up my bit for self-harm by running along Bootham in York, which is probably equivalent to a ten-a-day habit.

So let's go shopping instead. Supermarkets are always good for a column, being the greatest cultural indicator of how life is lived. It could be said supermarkets have been a force for good, providing greater choice and keeping prices low. Maybe they really have, but it is hard not to fear that such dominance comes at a price.

That is the view of an influential cross-party group of MPs which reported yesterday that the British high street will be all but wiped out in the next ten years. This Parliamentary body champions the cause of small shopkeepers. It paints a grim scenario under which unchecked expansion from supermarkets will kill off local shops, and then see the big chains raising prices after achieving saturation point.

The MPs call on the Government to appoint a retail regulator or "tsar", who would keep a check on supermarkets. This sounds like a no-brainer, certainly in political terms - yet such regulators already patrol electricity, water and the train companies, so maybe it's not so daft.

Most people would agree that supermarkets are becoming too powerful - or at least they would if they weren't too busy rushing off to the nearest Tesco or Sainsbury's. We seem to have become enraptured by supermarkets, and our suspicions that we are in some way being had are quickly diverted by the latest two-for-one offer or a couple of quid off a bottle of red.

Supermarkets encourage many bad modern habits, from eating too much rotten food to over-buying everything just because it's available, yet few shoppers would wish to return to the old ways of visiting shop after shop.

Specialist food stores provide a delightful distraction - a good baker's or a deli, say - but for the day-to-day stuff, supermarkets have undeniable appeal.

Part of the problem lies in the law of unintended consequences. Much as the rampant building of flats can suddenly seem to be taking over a city without anyone doing anything about it, nobody seems to think about supermarkets until, one day, they wake up and find a bloody Tesco planted on every available square acre of the old green and pleasant.

Supermarkets provide a service millions use, yet they also add to the unchecked planning blight that swamps our cities and drowns us in cars.

What's to be done? I'd be happy if they banned all those infuriating Tesco adverts from the television, but that's another moan altogether.

Updated: 10:27 Thursday, February 16, 2006