LIKE many people in the Waterloo area I visit a certain large supermarket on Penistone Road every Saturday morning for the weekly shop.

The aisles there increasingly resemble the M62 at rush hour as hordes of shoppers jostle for HP Sauce and canned tomatoes.

Sometimes I tire of the gridlock and find a quiet place to ‘park’ the trolley so I can wander round more freely. Even then there’s a lot of squeezing past people, with both of us apologising to the other in the traditional English way.

Then there’s the queue to get served, which ranges in length from annoying to infuriating.

It’s no exaggeration to say that many more people make a pilgrimage to this supermarket every weekend than worship in any of the local churches.

But why do so many of us shop at supermarkets?

Bluntly, we have no choice. If you own a pet shop or a furniture store then you might welcome the arrival of one of the retail giants to your area because it will bring in more shoppers.

But if you run a newsagent, an off-licence or a fruit and veg store then your days are probably numbered.

As tumbleweed blows down the high streets we flock to supermarkets.

Shoppers were once on chatting terms with their butcher, baker and candlestick-maker. Now they’re confronted by a different face at the checkout of their local supermarket every week.

Anonymity becomes ingrained. On one recent occasion when I visited said Waterloo store the woman at the checkout tried repeatedly to strike up a conversation with me.

But I fobbed her off with the kind of monosyllabic replies that would have shamed a teenager.

I found the experience slightly unsettling, as if the checkout operator had broken some unwritten rule that says the customer should be served in sullen silence.

That’s what supermarkets do to you.

But there’s no point getting all po-faced about the spread of the retail giants. The fact is that we shop in supermarkets because they’re cheap and convenient.

Indeed, buying all your provisions under one roof is now so established that many of us would struggle to shop any other way. If there were no supermarkets we would have to visit the butchers, the bakers, the greengrocers etc just to get our – considerably more expensive – weekly shop.

Last week I was reporting from a planning meeting where a new supermarket at the Ringway Centre off St John’s Road was being discussed.

Only one councillor voted against granting planning permission.

He reasoned that a new store would drive out the corner shops in the area - just as supermarkets have done in other parts of Huddersfield.

I think all of us at the meeting knew that his fears were justified.

But equally all of us knew that if this supermarket goes ahead it will not want for customers.

If supermarkets have killed the high street they did it with our help.

But still it’s a shame.

I was in Sicily this month and one of the many great things about the island was the lack of retail giants.

Even the capital, Palermo, abounds with little ‘mom and pop’ stores, each different from another, which add to the character of the city.

Of course there are supermarkets in Sicily, but they tend to be small by English standards, not big enough to devastate surrounding businesses. And Sicilians don’t seem to go in for out-of-town stores either, meaning the centre of their towns are still full of life.

Is it too late to turn the clock back over here?

And would we want to even if we could?