Now, in the early 1950s an aunt of mine purchased a grocery shop ... one of two in the rural village of Glenfarg, roughly 101/2 miles south of Perth ... and at the time employed several staff - including her brother (my dad) - who drove a LARGE, well~stocked Austin van serving the *local farming communities.

Business thrived until the mid '60s ... when the forerunners to today's supermarkets began to make an irreversible impact on *these customers' shopping habits - assisted, of course, by a steady increase in car ownership - and, not only was my aunt forced to close down, this also meant my dad had to look for another job when he was already more than fifty years of age.

So, in fact, if anyone has reason to be bitter about the rise of those GIANT enterprises, it's the folk hit the hardest by their advent. But, I'm not, ... because my dad - who'd been a qualified automobile electrician before joining his sister - soon found another delivery job with an old-established wine merchants in Perth itself, while my aunt had her shop converted into a B&B ... catering for regular overspill of guests from a couple of local hotels.