Our marriage lasted for 59 years, until my husband died in 1996. There must be a moral somewhere in this.AUDREY HUNTWoodford Green, Essex. Every time I have a bath, I start worrying about the kind of people who shop at Sainsbury’s

The reason is simple. There is a pile of magazines on our bathroom floor, and the one on top is a copy of Sainsbury’s Magazine for June 1995, which catches my eye every time I manoeuvre myself into the bath and begin the long process of getting out again.
The first thing that catches my eye on the front cover (after the Great Summer Offer – “Save up to pounds 30 on food, drink, barbecues and beauty at Homebase and Sainsbury’s) is a colour photo of marmoreal ice cream nestling in frosted grapes below a caption reading “Delia’s glorious dairy desserts” Fair enough. Very Sainsbury’s.Then comes another feature heading which reads: “Perfect Packing: Look great, straight from the suitcase”. This is followed by “Safe Tanning: The best fakes around”, at which point my brow begins to furl.

Articles on how to pack? On how to suntan safely but deceptively? Can this be aimed at the pale, crumpled people I see round me in the queues at Sainsbury’s? The next heading is “Sunshine Food: Recipes for outdoor eating”, which is a bit more like the Sainsbury’s I know, but then comes the one that really floors me, “Breaking it Gently: How to say `I don’t love you any more’”.After this, what I normally do is lie there, gently stewing, trying to visualise the kind of readers Sainsbury’s Magazine is aiming at, and after several years of cogitation I have arrived at a scenario something like this …Scene: the barbecue area of a lovely garden, made more beautiful by things from Homebase, especially the shower curtains to stop the fat spitting. Susan is toying with some red peppers marinated in olive oil, looking at her watch and wondering if she can put them on the barbecue yet She is clearly waiting for someone. Ah! Here he is! It is her husband, Peter.Susan: Peter! You’re late!Peter: Yes. You see, Susan, I’ve been seeing someone …Susan: Oh, yes, your meeting in Paris. How did it go?Peter: Paris? Meeting?Susan: Don’t you remember? You went off yesterday morning to Paris saying you’d be back for lunch today!Peter: Did I? Look, Susan, I don’t know how to say this, but …Susan: And you look lovely, sweetie! At last those tips about packing are beginning to pay off!Peter: Packing?Susan: Remember I told you how to look great straight from the suitcase? NEVER mix up your overnight things with your smart things. ALWAYS leave everything on a hanger while folded and DON’T mix up your dirty washing with your clean stuff – send the dirty stuff home every day by post!Peter: Yes I remember now I expect you’re right. Look, Susan, there’s something I have to tell you …Susan: There certainly is!Peter: There is?Susan: That you’ve noticed my new suntan! Yesterday, when you went to Paris, I was as pale as one of Delia’s vanilla desserts! Now I’m a delicious coffee mahogany! That’s because they were offering a great pounds 30 discount off tins of wood-staining agents at Homebase!Peter: Wood staining …! But …Susan: No, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s quite safe! I asked at Homebase, and they say I should be able to go out in the rain in two days, and take coats of paint in five.Peter: Look, Susan, there’s something that’s more important than suntanning .. Susan: You’re right.

So, will it be tuna with, unusually, watercress, or fillet steak marinated in mustard and anchovy oil?Peter: I’m not sure I can really …Susan: And after that it’s your favourite – creme brulee! And it’s lovely and dark the way you like it, and this time I haven’t burnt it – I’ve discovered a safe way of giving creme brulee an artificial bronzing!Peter: Susan Listen to me This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say to you. “These are the Olympic Games and I think that is not fair,” he said.An organiser said it had been decided that no competition should continue if winds rose above two metres per second, and the reading when Soininen first came to jump was four metres per second.But the Finnish coach, Matti Pulli, said he had never seen such a delay for so slight a wind “Maybe the delay ruined the chances of Harada,” he added. A thousand sirens sounded; a thousand Rising Sun flags waved, as if in a gale. Japan’s Crown Prince who had seen the speed skater Hiroyasu Shimizu earn the hosts’ first gold the previous day, leaned forward in his seat as a nation’s hopes soared – and fell short 84.5 metres Fifth place.

Gold to the Finn.It was an inestimably bitter moment for the man who – by a mocking irony – comes from Sapporo, where Japanese jumpers so famously captured gold, silver and bronze in the 1972 Winter Olympics.Before Harada had come to a standstill, Soininen had begun to leap up and down in the realisation that he had followed in the glorious jumping tradition of Matti Nykanen, who won three golds and a silver in the 1980s.Soininen would be well advised to cease following Nykanen’s example at this point, as the latter, with three broken marriages behind him, has recently been reduced to working as a stripper for women’s parties.As Harada removed his helmet, he appeared to be grinning – although he might simply have been screwing up his face as he stared into the sun.”I am sorry,” he said afterwards. What more could he say?The drama of the occasion had been heightened by a decision to hold Soininen back for more than two minutes during what the judges – who included Japan’s gold medallist from 1972, Yukio Kasaya – deemed to be unfairly advantageous head winds.Soininen expressed his dissatisfaction with the delay afterwards. In a ghastly re-run of history, the ski jumper whose faltering final effort lost Japan the 1994 Olympic team gold let the individual title slip away on the last jump of the competition.
As he stood at the top of the 90-metre hill, the 29-year-old world champion needed only to get within four metres of the 90.5m with which he had led the rankings in the first of the two specified jumps.A rapt crowd of 40,000, packed around the base of the jump, had just seen the Finnish competitor Jani Soininen move into the gold medal position, one point ahead of a glamorous Japanese heart throb, the newcomer Kazuyoshi Funaki.And now the brilliant, sunlit morning was coming to its climax. “It is a case of taking the foot off the accelerator to allow him time to recover,” said Gooch’s coach, Alan Luke, yesterday..