A few years ago, I was asked to write a nostalgic feature about how my teenage high street – in Chelmsford, Essex – had changed for the worse: it was now all Costa Coffees, Primark and Pound shops and gangs of feral hoodies. Instead, it was a revelation.

I marvelled at how well-dressed the teenage girls were, nursing carrier bags of cut-price shopping (Primark sweater today, £9; cotton Laura Ashley smock in 1974, £25).

If only I’d had access to cheap fashion in the early 1970s, I wouldn’t have possessed just one pair of brown Loons with a broken zip (I grew, put on weight) for nearly a decade.

A few years ago, I was asked to write a nostalgic feature about how my teenage high street – in Chelmsford, Essex – had changed for the worse: it was now all Costa Coffees, Primark and Pound shops and gangs of feral hoodies. Instead, it was a revelation. File photo

If only I’d had a cafe from which to eye up boys, or a food market with artisan bread.

I still can’t believe the bargains I found in Pound shops; I kept asking the assistants: ‘How much is that?’ ‘It’s a pound.’ ‘Noooo! Really? And how much is that?’

My piece of copy was binned, of course. Coffee chains, click-and-collect and fast fashion are the new devil incarnate in many nostalgic eyes.

As is the current appetite for internet shopping, to be delivered by drones taking flight from Zeppelin depots in the sky in the very near future.

This is usually the opinion of men who rarely brave the crowds to go shopping, only venturing out to perform what I describe as cherry-picking, the fun part of shopping: a bottle of olive oil from the deli, say, or cheese from a farmer’s market stall.

It’s only in London, the smart bits, that shopping in small independent bakers, greengrocers, bookshops and delis lives up to expectations.

Visit a market town, such as Taunton in Somerset, or Richmond in North Yorkshire, and you are frequently met with incredulous, open-mouthed stares should you have the temerity to ask for mascarpone, or tofu, or the new Zadie Smith, or for the pet shop to be open on a Saturday afternoon.

My mum, who was disabled and couldn’t drive, did a weekly shop in Sainsbury’s for seven children by bus. Can you imagine? No woman would do that these days, and why should we?

Internet shopping and home delivery have liberated women far more surely than the Pill ever did. So bring on the drones, even though my insane border collies are bound to chase them.

In the future, internet shopping will be delivered by drones taking flight from Zeppelin depots

The Amazombies are not people like me, who get the latest bestseller delivered the next day, but those who think the act of going shopping is somehow a culturally improving expedition.

I don’t doubt the people who toil in Amazon warehouses are underpaid with little rest time, but no one forces them to work there. Perhaps they’d prefer to pick vegetables from the freezing soil for hour after hour. Nope, thought not.

I once asked a youngish mum why she bothered to go to the supermarket, dragging her child like a balloon that’s lost its helium, when she could get it all delivered; you can even get food delivered the same day from Amazon these days if you live within the M25. She said she ‘wanted to get out of the house, a change of scene.