One of the many uses of blogging (for the bloggger, if not the reader) is that one can use it to sound off on all sorts of apparently trivial things. Like my newsagent. Or, rather, ex-newsagent,

I've had my newspapers delivered every morning since we moved to Finchley just under two years ago. As you might imagine, it's a hefty account - I get a lot. And the service has been superb. Every day, they are outside my door by 7am latest.

And then,around Christmas, it all went wrong. Copies missing. Duplicates. And late delivery - often not before 9.30am.

It turns out that there is a new manager, and that the paperboy is on holiday. That's fine. Everyone deserves a break, I told the shop when I rang to find out what was going wrong. But two weeks later, and nothing has changed. So I rang them this weekend. 'He's still on holiday'. How long for? 'Maybe a month. I don't know'.

So, I said, am I expected to wait an intederminate time for a service for which I pay heavily to resume a semblance of efficiency? 'He's on holiday'.

Ok, I said, please cancel my entire order from now. Everything. Send me a bill for what I owe.

'OK'.

And that was that. Given that my account is worth around £250 a month, you might have thought they'd try to persuade me to stay with them. But clearly Martin the newsagent in Regent's Park Road is doing so fantastically well that they can let £3000 a year accounts wander off without even an attempt to hold on to them.

There. Got that off my chest.