In general I loathe shopping of any description.
I rarely do it unless I absolutely have to, for instance in the run-up to Christmas, and then I find it not only a chore, but extremely stressful, not being any good at thinking up presents for people.
I would include everyday food shopping within this consignment for Room 101, except that there are occasions when you can step outside the ordinary and throw some more interesting items in the trolley, even in Tesco or Sainsbury's, but more so in Waitrose.
But even so, whatever the supermarket, real food shopping it ain't.
East Anglia is pretty much a desert when it comes to searching out quality local produce unless you use the farm shops and farmers' markets.
We are lucky to have a very good one of the latter at Linton once a month, which is a saviour, particularly on the meat front.
We also have some good market stalls locally for veg and fish, so it's not all bad news.
However, regular readers of this column will know that every now and again I explore other parts of our great country, and I usually find myself envious of the shopping offers I find – and that is not in comparison with Haverhill, which is quite small, but with virtually everywhere else within reasonable distance.
If, for instance, I wanted to do some real food shopping in Cambridge, say, I would struggle to do it at all, let alone conveniently.
Cambridge seems to be all clothes shops nowadays.
Last week I was in Macclesfield for the first time in a decade or two and found it much improved and regenerated since last time.
For a town of 50,000, it is very easy to get into, parking charges much the same as, or even less than, Haverhill, two minutes walk to the town centre and independent shops for almost everything I could think of.
It has a good indoor market with the best cheese stall I have ever come across, and even a bacon stall, while the little fishmongers had a selection to compare with any I have found at a fishing port.
All this operates around a huge Tesco Metro right in the middle of the town, with a great big independent department store opposite it.
Maybe 50,000 is an optimum size for a town and we don't have many of them in East Anglia – Yarmouth and Lowestoft are the only two I can think of.
There's a big gap between the 35,000 towns – Bury St Edmunds, King's Lynn, Bishop's Stortford, etc and the big cities like Cambridge, Chelmsford, Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich.
One is too small to have the variety and economic strength for such a wide range of independents, and the other is too large to get into and get around conveniently and cheaply.
Although East Anglia has been given over to the corn barons for hundreds of years, there is now a growing number of farms producing something more geared up to feeding the local populace.
If you look around you can find some good local produce, but it isn't in one place and it isn't always easy to get to.
There are plenty of real food businesses around the area as well, which you can see at the county shows and occasional festivals of food, and order stuff by post and off the Internet, but that's not the same to me as walking into a shop stocked with a wide range of mouth-watering fresh produce.
And I don't think supermarkets are entirely to blame. Maybe we East Anglians have been lazy or undiscerning in our food shopping and now we've got what we deserve.