I experienced a modern day phenomenon whilst at the supermarket this afternoon. There I was, minding my own business in Tesco when I became the latest victim of trolley rage.

I had just collected my shopping trolley and put two newspapers into it when it happened. I turned the corner to walk up the short aisle between magazines and sandwiches and there was a really scruffy looking old bloke perusing some publication or other, while his trolley was completely blocking the aisle.

"Excuse me" I said, rather loudly as it was very busy and quite noisy.

Absolutely no response from old doddery bloke.

"Excuse me but could you move your trolley" I said somewhat pointedly.

Still no response, either he was ignoring me or plain didn't hear me. So I push his trolley aside with mine and walk past.

"What the fuck are you doing?!?!?!??" Came out of the blokes mouth, in a very loud indignant manner.

I explained to him that I had asked twice to get past him but that he either didn't hear me or chose to ignore me. This was met with a reply even more terse than the last one. Something about me being the incosiderate one, and that I should have more courtesy towards elderly people.

I walked away from him, only to notice about two minutes later that he was right behind me, still banging on about how rude I was and beginning to really annoy me.

This carried on for about three aisles, up past the bread, down past the cheese and other dairy produce, past the various meats on display, on and on and on, as far as the frozen vegetables. By this point I had well and truly had enough...

"Will you just get the fuck away from me before I throw a bag of frozen parsnips at your head you complete freak" I screamed at him, standing there in the frozen produce aisle, other shoppers walking past, staring, sniggering.

I mean, jesus, what has the world come to when a person can't even do a little supermarket shopping in peace on a Saturday afternoon without being stalked by some doddery old bloke in a scruffy raincoat who had nothing in his shopping trolley but magazines and bottles of alcohol. Sheesh.