I'm cooking dinner tonight. Having existed on toasted pitta bread dipped in houmous and calling it a meal for far too long, I'm getting back in the kitchen to flex my culinary muscle. And the recipe I've settled on demands wine. As does the chef, come to that.

So I trotted up to the checkout, loaded my shopping, including a rather nice Sauvignon Blanc, onto the conveyor. Exchanged pleasant hellos with the checkout girl, declined the offer of help with my packing (I'm proud of my packing speed - help would just make me lazy). And then she came to the bottle of wine.

"I'm sorry to ask, but do you have any ID?" she asked.

Oh no, she did NOT.

I don't have ID. I don't have a driver's licence and I'm not in the habit of carrying my passport around. So no, I don't have any ID - none that they'd accept. All I have is my debit card with my name, my press card with my name and picture, and my health insurance card with my name and date of birth. Put together, those three things quite conclusively prove that I am who I say I am, and I am currently aged 25 years, nine months, and 29 days. But unless it's a document that a mugger would quite cheerfully have off you, they're not interested, are they?

Then, just for added enjoyment, the woman waiting in line behind me started kicking up a fuss.

"Could you hurry up and just put the rest of her stuff through?" she sighed. "I am actually in a hurry."

Oh dear, you poor sweet thing! Are you? What a shame, because, not only am I immensely enjoying being treated like an underage drinker, but I have a 30-minute bus ride home, I have a house to clean and food to prepare. I've got, gosh, just all the time in the world !

Anyway, checkout girl and her supervisor were having none of it. "I'm sorry," said checkout girl, putting the bottle aside.

"It's fine," I said through gritted teeth, slamming the rest of my shopping into bags. I mean did they really think I had gone to the bother of forging a debit card, a press card and a health insurance card for the sheer purpose of coming down there and sneaking a lousy bottle of white wine past them?

"You look young," she offered.

Yes, well, thank you dear, but bollocks do I. I look all of my 25, have-been-able-to-legally-purchase-alcohol-in-this-country-since-1999 years.

Then, the cheeky mare suggested "Maybe you should carry your passport around with you."

You know what, that's not a bad idea. Maybe I should! Yes! As if carrying a handbag containing a purse, mobile phone, Oyster card and an iPod doesn't make me quite enough of a mugger's wet dream as it is. Why don't we throw an EXPENSIVE LEGAL DOCUMENT OF IDENTITY into the mix?

So yeah. I don't think I'll be doing that. I will also not, as per another brilliant suggestion of hers, be taking it "as a compliment"

Really want to compliment me? Sell me my stuff!

And I hope that b***h behind me was really, really, really late for wherever she had to be.