Only a complete loon would venture out to a DIY outlet on a bank holiday, as demonstrated on Monday when I found myself bumbling about in some sort of vast B&Q hangar on the outskirts of west London, along with hundreds of other dead-eyed numpties and their screaming offspring.

Not content with a single foolhardy act, I then proceeded to stagger around two further retail outlets before returning home for a little lie down in the recovery position.

While I didn't learn much about kitchens, which was the original purpose of my idiotic outing, I did discover that point-of-sale compliance appears to be the retail equivalent of herding cats.

I only visited three stores, and all fell down in one way or another. At B&Q the display showing all the available kitchen door finishes didn't offer any clues as to what the different designs were called, or how much they might cost.

Heading off to Wickes, the equivalent display did include details about the name of each range, but below that was the message "place offer POS over this". Such was my state of mental degeneration, I actually had to read that twice before realising that this was relevant to store staff, and not to me the consumer. I wonder what on earth shoppers who don't have any insights into point-of-sale lingo make of this sort of stuff?

By this stage I needed a drink, so I popped into a nearby Co-Op where I was delighted to see a half price wine festival was underway. But the POS goblins had been at work here too, as my search for a suitably slurpable Shiraz reached an information gap in the shape of a placard stating "insert A4 POS here".

By its very absence the importance of point-of-sale was revealed.