Sometimes the advance of Tesco and Asda seems unstoppable but the emergence of these two spartan retailers hints the future is far from certain for even the most confident supermarkets.

Their ambition is to supply a third of all our groceries – already achieved in Germany. They are not much more than two per cent of the market today.

The formula is easy to understand. The discounters offer a strictly limited number of own brands. They achieve huge savings born of volume purchases and display their offerings in unadorned surroundings. Their prices are, on average, 40 per cent cheaper than mainstream supermarkets.

I often drop into Aldi’s outlet in Galashiels. When the cashier tots up the total my first instinct is to suggest she has got the additions wrong – it is too little.

If only Britain could break out of the daft constrictions of the EU’s protectionism, grocery prices could fall by a further 40 per cent.

Can we be secure in thinking this will not occur to our politicians, ever busy to express their synthetic concern about “poverty”? I feel certain we can.

My heart sinks that the football season is starting again. I cannot object to what free adults do in private, but football pollutes the airwaves and the news.

I used to be a loyal listener to Radio Scotland but it overwhelms us non-soccerphiles – with the remorseless blarney about the teams’ ups and downs. Is it really a sport? It strikes me as more like a business – at least at the really tedious end of Celtic v Rangers.

The tide of football baloney also hints that summer is near its end and soon we will be back in the dark and damp of a Scottish winter.

My prejudices against Association Football are mild though, compared to my feelings about golf and golfers. What business is it of mine to object to these harmless rambles around well-manicured lawns?

It is something to do with the implied complacency of it all, I think. To golf is to be in a limbo – not quite dead, but certainly not alive.

This gives me a singular name-dropping opportunity tied to the death this month of Alexander Solzenitzen. I once bumped into him on the shores of Loch Rannoch. Not the usual location to encounter a Russian Nobel laureate, but he was visiting a chum in Perthshire.

I reminded him of a remark – half contempt and half humour – that he made about the cardiganed folk who talk the most stale of cliches on the greens or in their silly bunkers.

Solzenitzen’s line was “Western man enjoys freedom. He has liberty. What does he do with these precious gifts ? (Pause for effect) He plays golf !”

I visited my old college this week. It was a mistake. It is shocking how youthful the students are and disturbing that they are of both sexes now. Even worse that I should be so distressed by this harmless fact.

I was sad to realise nobody in the college now remembered me. My last human contact died this year.