WE should have known better, I suppose. But Owd Tom was insistent: he'd not been to Marton for months and, anyway, he wanted to see the prices that his lambs were fetching in that there new superstore.

That should have set alarm bells ringing and it did draw a frown from Mrs C, who has a better nose for coming trouble than me. But by then, I had already said yes.

So Tom put on his shiny suit (rumour has it that it was the demob suit a grateful nation gave him in 1945) and off we went shopping. Even Mrs C, apprehensive as she was, was not expecting the explosions that followed.

We had virtually done the rounds of the shelves, and our trolley was almost full, when we heard an unmistakable voice from the frozen meat section a couple of rows behind.

"Tha should know better, a Dales woman like tha'sen," said the voice. "Buyin' that rammel when there's good fresh Yorkshire lamb on yon counter there."

Mrs C sped off and I put the trolley into overdrive. Having snow-ploughed our way through startled shoppers, we came to the scene to find Owd Tom standing glaring at a matronly lady of advancing years.

In her trembling hands she was holding a leg of frozen New Zealand lamb.

I recognised her as farmer's widow from Crookedale way who, when her husband died a few years back, had sold up and moved into town. For a few seconds, she quivered undecided between tears and rage. The latter won.

"Dunna tha' talk to me like that, yun' man," she rasped. "Ah know as much about lamb prices as thee and I'm gonna show summat that'll make tha really angry."

Now Tom was already out of his depth. For a start, no-one has called him Young Man for half a century. When she grabbed him by the lapel of his shiny suit, he followed her like, well, a lamb.

He was frog marched to the fresh meat counter where this formidable lady pointed at a leg of fresh English lamb much the same size as the frozen joint she was carrying.

"Look at that, yun' man," she said. And tapped an angry finger on the two price tags. Tom sniffed bad-temperedly and squinted to read the figures.

"Bleeping 'ell," he yelped.

For the Kiwi joint, brought half way round the world, was a full £2.50 cheaper than the leg which could have come just six miles from Tom's own Hard Rock farm.

"I'm a widow woman now and I have to watch the coppers," said the woman in triumph. "Just you tell me how that can be reet?"

And, indeed, that is a good question. What kind of madness can allow civil servants in Brussels wax fat when hill farmers like Tom are going broke in their thousands?

Tom was so abashed that he took the lady off for a cup of tea.

By pure coincidence, a newspaper investigation published a couple of days later showed that British food prices are amongst the highest in the world.

So, too, are supermarket profits. Could the two be connected, I wonder?

*The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.