Jos Biggs as a tale for you today, hmmm......

My cough was troubling me and everyone else within a range of about 500 yards. There is no telling when this cough is going to start, but once started it makes a real job of it and doesn’t give up for a good ten minutes.

A drink does nothing to assuage its intensity, but I discovered that if I could attack it before it really got going a honey sweet would stymie its worst excesses.

So in pursuit of solace in the form of a honey sweet I went into Dia. For a moment I wondered if I had accidentally stumbled across the modern Spanish version of the Marie Celeste - it was utterly deserted!

The trolleys were there, waiting to be pushed. The chill cabinets were full to brimming, the vegetables smiled alluringly from their display trays, the shelves were burdened with every sort of non-perishable items from toilet rolls to tins of tuna, yet nowhere was there any sign of human presence.

Not only was there no sign of any staff, there were also no customers. Undeterred I sought and found a packet of honey sweets, price 1€.

I went to the till and made a discrete ‘customer waiting to pay’ kind of a noise, but to no avail. I perambulated the aisles, all of them, twice - I was the only example of homo sapiens in the whole shop.

I returned to the till and made a much louder ‘customer waiting to pay’ noise. Nothing.

I stood in solitary splendour, sweets in one hand, a euro coin in the other, and cogitated. Should I leave the coin on the counter? If I did then the staff would find the coin and have no idea why it was there.

Should I put the sweets back and leave? No. I was a customer. I wanted to buy sweets. I had the sweets and I had the right money ready to pay for them. 

I sighed deeply, put the euro back in my purse and still clutching my sweets left the shop.

I was guilty of shoplifting to the tune of 1€. I don’t think the police are likely to come knocking with a warrant for my arrest, but I wonder how much I could have got away with if I’d been so minded?

Technically I’m a criminal - but my conscience troubles me not a jot!

And I don’t think the theft of a bag of sweets worth 1€ is likely to cause the downfall of a national chain of supermarkets like Dia!