An experience last week enables me to offer a replacement for that tired simile for tedium, “like watching paint dry”. My substitute is “like watching a Tesco delivery van disgorge its contents into a supermarket”.

I spent fully ten minutes doing this on Tuesday of last week in Speedwell Street, aboard a number 5 bus bound for Cowley Road which was stuck in the huge traffic jam caused by the delivery. My anger was compounded by the fact that I was already running slightly late for the celebration dinner at Aziz restaurant marking 30 years of care for sick young people at Helen & Douglas House. Guests included the former England footballer Mick Channon, racehorse trainer Henrietta Knight with her legendary jockey husband Terry Biddlecombe and Oxford East MP Andrew Smith, hotfoot from the vote on gay marriage in the Commons.

Ours was not the only bus trapped at the busy junction with St Aldates. Around us were four or five others, all laden with passengers, suffering from Tesco’s selfish action.

The bus driver told me this was a regular event at this spot. So did the taxi driver who took us back from the excellent dinner, generously laid on by restaurant boss Aziz-ur Rahman. It is time for the authorities to investigate Tesco’s delivery policy. The scene of the chaos is, of course, directly opposite the police station.

I am writing this just after listening on the radio to another Tesco-related annoyance: this was the 45-minute puff for the store delivered in the shape of former boss Terry Leahy’s appearance on Desert Island Discs.