Only the stationery shop has some appeal. I'm convinced – alongside every other writer I know – that the only thing preventing me from becoming Tolstoy is the lack of some coloured file cards and a better pen. Throw in a display book and I could be Shakespeare. Other than the stationery shop, it's all so tedious. Clothing stores are particularly annoying. I don't know if you've noticed but, every few months, they change the design of all the clothes. This is an outrageous attack on the consumer. Finally you discover a set of clothes that leaves you somewhere short of completely hideous and so, within the bounds of hygiene, you wear the outfit day and night, until it looks like a hobo's rags. You then walk into the shop in which, five years previously, you purchased the outfit and say "same again, thanks mate," and he looks at you as if you're insane. "We no longer do the pale blue," he says with withering contempt. "But I do have something similar in a tartan."

This shows a misunderstanding of the male mind, or at least of the morose mind of most middle-aged males. For years we tried to make a fashion statement: one that could be taken down and used against us. Now, the look we're going for could be described as "blergh". It's Country Road without those flamboyant off-greys. We have only one requirement from the world of fashion: that our entry into a room produces neither hilarity or pity. Having achieved this formula for invisibility, we'd like to repeat the recipe. For a clothes shop to dump items is like Woolworths saying: "Oh, we are not doing chicken this year, but I can sell you a nice piece of fish." Speaking of which, how annoying are the supermarkets? They've created speciality sections so you never know the location of anything. Ghee could be in the fridge next to the butter, in aisle six with the International Foods, over there in Health and Goodness, or – for all I know – packaged up as a face scrub in Chemist Supplies. Again a business idea: a supermarket organised alphabetically. They'd be Apples at the door and Zucchinis at the exit, with everything else in order. Organise your shopping list accordingly and the thing could be done in 10 minutes.

Of course, there would be issues as to whether the tinned tuna is under F for Fish, T for Tinned, and O for Outrageously Overpriced, but I'm sure things would resolve over time. There's also far too much choice. Do top loaders and front loaders really require a different formation of sudsy stuff? Do we need dog biscuits offering specific formulations according to the age, breed and personality type of the dog? And at what point did the purchase of milk become a way of expressing one's deeper life journey – "Brad and I prefer the A2 protein, homogenised yet organic, in a light-to-medium formulation, from cows who've willingly agreed to the process of milking." There are people on Tinder who've chosen a new partner in less time. My fantasy, for years now, is to create a blokes' supermarket offering just five products – lamb chops, beans, potatoes, loo roll and the odd bar of soap. They could have an aisle each. The aisles could be organised alphabetically. If you insist, they could also offer bread, but in a single loaf – multigrain at one end; white at the other. The kids could start on the kiddie end, the adults on the other, and everyone would be happy. It would be the best invention since, well, sliced bread.

Hardware stores, of course, need thorough reform. How can they be this large and never have the thing you need? We used to have a neighbourhood place the size of a shoebox and yet the bloke always had everything. "I'd like a 4.5 centimetre blurgin pipe, with double-flanged ends," you'd say, and he'd reach into the drawer right next to the counter and there it would be. He wouldn't even move from where he was standing. Capitalism, I know, prides itself on offering choice, but where do I sign up to choose less choice and less time spent shopping?