Somewhere on the Information Superhighway, I seem to be stranded along a stretch of medieval cobblestones festooned with signs reading "Detour" and "Danger: Road Impassable." Which helps explain why I am sitting here waiting for the delivery of a box of corn flakes and a bag of coffee that is quite likely to cost me $178.61.

If all goes as expected - as most wrong things do - it will arrive aboard a 20-ton tractor-trailer truck that will get stuck around a corner, block traffic in my street for an hour and attract the attention of the local gendarmerie, the residents' association and the old bat across the way who suspects that I own four cats.

And when this juggernaut grinds to a halt, out will roll either two small cartons or enough culinary goodies to last me through a medium-term nuclear winter.

Life wasn't always this much fun. But that was before my wife discovered Online Shopping, something she considers the greatest invention since the answering machine, the credit card and freebie cosmetics samples. I consider it the Devil's Own Tool (DOT) and I'm sure I saw it mentioned in the Book of Revelation, right after the part about the Bottomless Pit.

Online Shopping, for those of you who have been vacationing in the third parallel universe to the left, involves using your home computer (another DOT) to contact your favorite store or shop on the Internet, order up any amount of books, records, bras, yo-yos, hula-hoops and Rolls-Royces, and have them delivered to your door. All from the comfort of your easy chair without missing a single rerun of "M*A*S*H."

In my wife's case, it was the supermarket, Sainsbury's by name, sort of a British mini Wal-Mart. She wearied of battling the parking problems and the crowded aisles, and dragging along a recalcitrant husband to save hiring a haulage elephant. I certainly had more fun things I'd rather be doing, like pulling my fingernails out one by one.

So when Sainsbury's announced the advent of its Internet Orderline service, to do it all electronically, it seemed a marvelous idea. (As did, of course, the Edsel, aerosol spray paint and washing-up soap for cats, which goes to show how history's darkest lessons get lost in the dazzle of the latest Bright Idea to come along.)

Somehow we managed to get the first order through and delivered. So what if all the cokes, half the baked beans and four other items were missing, we got a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes big enough to deserve its own delivery van, and seven bags of Mrs. Anderson's shopping was erroneously hauled up three flights of stairs and back down again? So it was all part of the upward learning curve.

The curve, however, ceased being either upward or learning or even a curve. It became a dive off a very steep precipice as, on the next go, we spent three hours assembling shopping lists that vanished off the "List Maintenance" screen, checking little boxes that promptly became unchecked, trying to get the "Tool Bar" to do something other than sit there looking all blue and cute, and searching for the "Checkout" button which kept playing hide and seek somewhere down in the computer's burbling bowels.

My wife delivered of herself a parting message to Sainsbury's Orderline, Bill Gates and the global Information Superwhatsit in general - none of which bears repeating here, lest the keys melt with embarrassment - and hied off to dream of her old Smith-Corona.

Being a man, I am built of sterner stuff. It's called "stupidity."

I decided to tiptoe carefully, which is why I punched just enough keys to order up a couple of items - a reasonable-sized box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes and a 250-gram bag of cafetiere coffee. And lo, the "Checkout" button popped up, and I gleefully pounced, confirming my order and issuing instructions for delivery in four days' time.

But, as Custer doubtless mused when he first spotted all that unanticipated warpaint, something went wrong. The Sainsbury computer confirmed my order, thanked me for the $178.61 I had just spent, then without further ado promptly punched its little time clock and for all I know, went home for a few bytes with Mrs. C and all the little microchippies.

Leaving me right in it, as they say. $178.61! Right or wrong, it won't matter much shortly, because when she sees it, my wife will have my guts for garters.

So here I sit, waiting, fingers crossed that the big Sainsbury's truck doesn't loom into view. Meanwhile, the nosy bat across the way waits, too - oh, and she is wrong. I don't own four cats - they own me. And right now, they are down to four cans of Felix cat food. Time for resupply.

Maybe I can order a truckload through the supermarket. Let's see, that's http://www.orderline ... The question is, will I get 10 cans of cat food, or 10 tons? And how about kitty litter? That's the way with cats - you pay to put it in one end and take it out the other.

As for me, death by wife, death by bankruptcy - what does it matter? Such are the wages of cyberspace.

Thought for the Week: Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

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