Where did this come from? Suddenly it's summer again. My lips are salty with sweat, as is the rest of my body, the thermometer on our living room clock steadfastly refuses to drop below 24 celcius and al the frozen shopping we did is re-freezing after being put away.

We have a wonderful way of doing shopping: We travel eight miles into the centre of Birmingham, laden with barely enough money to keep the kids hydrated and to fill the fridge and freezer, with enough left over for a Taxi from somewhere six miles closer to home. We don't do this in ther car because we don't own one and neither of us can drive. We do this with a 75 litre rucksack, which comfortably holds something like 30lbs of food, which then sits on my back.

Some days are easier, when we only go about two miles to the closest Sainsbury's and stock up on expensive salads, crisps and "American Range" Southern fried chicken and ribs.

Our kids are funny buggers to buy groceries for anyway, with Bethan refusing anything with any goodness or nutritional value and Allison telling us she's gone off everything she's been happily scoffing down for the last two years. It doesn't help...and I mean it really doesn't help...when Charlie says "I don't know what I feel like eating this week, let's go into this shop and play it by ear". We invariably come out £20 lighter and 10lb heavier.

Me? I like lots of things, I like variety. But I don't like roast dinners and stews on the hottest day of the year and I don't like steak. I can't bring myself to eat a meat which, even at its leanest, makes your teeth spring back like they're trying to chew through a trampoline and makes your jaw ache so much that you can't bear the thought of tackling the ice cream you've got for pudding.

I can make chinese. I'm good at chinese. My satay's a hit, my stir-fry has to be tasted to be believed, I've done a chop suey which went down a storm and I fry my own prawn crackers. I do excellent Italian, I like my Texmex efforts and I like experimenting with combinations of ingredients. I'm easy to please. I could live happily off 20p packets of noodles, a bag of rice, jar of soy sauce, some eggs and a few chicken breasts.

However, I live with the most picky eaters ever, and it drives me frankly nuts. I love food shopping but having to cope with "I don't like that anymore" from three sides simultaneously is making me hate it.

So I've developed a system for food shopping. I give them ten minutes to decide what I'm supposed to get. If they don't make a decision, I go out and buy what I think they're going to eat, or more precisely, what I can bear to cook, plus one or two treats. It kinda works, but only when I'm doing the shopping alone. When I take them with me, all bets are off.

Thank god you don't have to pick out your own birthday presents.