Life's basic essentials in a basket.

Mr T managed to neatly capture in his short and sweet list the staples of the British shopping basket since the turn of the last century - potatoes, bread, butter and cheese.

Fortunately (or not, depending on your view of progress), the range of choice for each of these products has grown enormously since the 1900s - so whilst this morning's mission for Mr T was on the surface pretty straightforward, I still found myself deliberating over the country of origin of his butter, the scale of maturity of a lump of cheese, the size, colour and best use of a particular bag of potatoes and how thick and seedy a slice of brown bread really should be...

Mr T on the other hand was just genuinely grateful when I quickly returned with his bag of essentials, and so made the mental gymnastics in front of the shelves today all the more worthwhile.