YOU know what it's like. You go to the supermarket for the same old thing, week in, week out.

Then one day, you pick whatever this old reliable is off the shelf to be greeted by snazzy new packaging and the words "new and improved".

We'll leave aside for the moment the question of exactly how something can be both new and yet at the same time improved.

The point is, suddenly another of the stable, known quantities on which your ordered life is built has changed, and not always for the better.

I suppose it's human nature that we're always looking for improvements, always heading closer to perfection.

It's what drives Olympic athletes, daring explorers, and those nutters who challenge the more obscure records in the Guinness Book.

And I suppose it's human nature again to apply that principle to say, breakfast cereal.

But all this "improvement" for improvement's sake can get you down after a while.

I mean, it's not just suddenly getting a bowl of cornflakes that taste completely different to the ones you've been eating for 30 years (although that's one product that, as far as I know, hasn't altered in more decades than that - at least someone knows to leave well alone).

The food market is highly competitive and ever-changing, and if you have a taste for something that isn't selling too well, don't be surprised if it transforms or disappears from the shelves altogether (I still mourn the loss of beef-flavoured chipsticks in Marks and Spencers, and don't get me started on Biscuit Ranges I Have Known And Loved).

But where change and improvement really bites is the world of technology.

The computer I'm writing this on was probably obsolete the moment I got it home, and that was getting on for three years ago.

Things have moved on, and if I want to keep up to date with the latest games, applications, and internet services, chances are I'll have to shell out for a new one soon.

That's if I have any money left after I've finished buying DVDs to replace all my video cassettes.

Oh yes, remember all those adverts for films on video "yours to own and cherish forever"?

What they meant was, until DVD comes along and you can get a better picture, director's commentary, deleted scenes and hey, it won't snarl up your video recorder either.

And then, of course, a few months after you've proudly placed your favourite movie among your DVD collection, they release a Special Edition.

Oh the dilemma. Do I really need that retrospective documentary?

And 27 hours of featurettes that I'll never watch? And the restored 18 seconds which critics swear "makes it a whole new movie experience"?

So you convince yourself (or not). And then six months later a Deluxe Collector's Edition hits the shelf as heavily as you'd like to strike the head of that firm's marketing department.

And the really annoying thing is this: we don't have to do it. I'm so old I can remember a time when no-one had videos and a major film showing on one of the three TV channels was a big event.

When the Sinclair ZX81 was a distant dream, and music on cassette was a stunning innovation (I still have more music on cassette tape than CD).

We survived. God only knows how we filled the empty hours we now spend watching the 40 days' extra features on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but we did.

But now we're trapped in an endless cycle of consumerist improvement, with no hope of escape.

And so, with that thought in mind, I'm off to the sales to see if I can't finally replace my ageing video copy of Spurs' 1991 FA Cup run.

Hopefully, I'll be back next week.

But if I've been replaced by a faster, smarter-looking columnist who writes better and in half the time, don't be too surprised. That's progress, after all.