Who cares if the Bank of England says prices are rising at their fastest rate for 15 years? Not me, for one. Because even at a time when house values are climbing so dizzily that if you ask an estate agent to show you something a little more expensive he just takes you to the exact same house, only three days later, I have managed to lay my hands on a large family house, with a big lush garden, in a very central part of town. How? Because the town is in Guatemala.

The Bank of England is anxious because the cost of living has risen by 3 per cent. Just 3 per cent? Have officials in Threadneedle Street been smoking something? It now costs £4 just to travel one stop on the London Underground: 100 years ago you could have bought a house with that amount of money. This comparison pretty much sums up the essence of inflation, “the branch of economics which demonstrates that, if you really want to get the best deal, pricewise, the smartest time to buy anything was 20 years ago”.

It’s such a simple lesson, isn’t it? But one we all stubbornly refuse to learn. If only we all went out today and bought everything we are likely to need for the rest of our lives, then when 2027 came around we’d feel as rich as Bill Gates does now — Bill Gates being immune from the effects of inflation on account of his already having all the money he’ll ever need to live well, whereas we have all the money we’ll ever need to live well, providing we die by next Tuesday.

In the meantime, what is the Government doing about all those instances of inflation that are even more aggravating than swollen train fares, or the jump in price between what the mechanic said it would cost to fix your car and the figure that appears at the foot of his final bill?

Razor blades, for instance. Every time you look inside the bathroom cabinet they’ve added another blade. Soon there’ll be a shaving cartridge with 42 blades. You’ll apply it to your face, pull the razor down three millimetres, and that’ll be it: your whole face will have been shaved in one short stroke, producing a neat finish of 42 parallel nicks. It’s pretty much all we men fantasise about; the day we’ll be able to save six seconds on our shaving routine by having “42-blade technology”, a saving only slightly marred by the extra hour it will now take us to prise the stubble from in between the 42 blades.

Clothes, too, are in the grip of inflation. First there was large and extra large. Then came “husky”, as if you were buying outfits for a sled dog. Then came XXL. Then XXXL. Next will be XXXXL; as if it’s the name tag on a school sweater belonging to a Roman emperor. It’s one of those spooky symmetries of Nature that the only garments that can accommodate an elongated XXXXL label are themselves XXXXL in size. (I’m talking about men, here. Women don’t like to buy XXXXL clothes. They prefer shops where even a size 10 is cut generously enough to fit a woman so ample that, were she to visit Africa, she would attract the interest of poachers.)

And literary inflation is a menace, isn’t it? There are too many books published; some of them so badly written that you wonder if even the publishers ever got around to reading the manuscripts.

The number of celebrities is out of control, especially now the term “celebrity” embraces the sort of person you’d shuck oysters with your bare teeth to avoid. OK, Jade Goody may not be the smartest woman in the world, but she’s surely one of the most unpleasant. Neil and Christine Hamilton: are they the sort of celebrities you want to see in any TV show apart from one titled, Celebrity Lion Wrestling? Doesn’t it contravene some human rights statute to inflict David Gest on a viewing public?

The film director Billy Wilder recounted how relieved Hollywood was when television arrived, because until television was invented, films were regarded as the lowest form of art. “Now,” said Wilder, “we have something to look down on.”

And that was before there were 794 channels for him to sniff at. Is anyone grasping the reins of this boom? Some of the channels aren’t even real TV channels. When a TV station can no longer think of a good excuse to launch a second, and then a third, sister channel, it simply clogs the airwaves by rebroadcasting all its existing channels, but with an hour’s time delay. It’s as if TV executives woke up one morning to face a boisterous mob on their front lawn, with the ringleader baying into his bullhorn, “What do we want?” and the crowd responding, “Television!”. Then: “And when do we want it?” Response: “An hour after it’s been on the neighbouring channel!”

Newspaper columns are just as guilty. Several thousand years ago, they consisted of a few chisel marks on a cave wall. Then a couple of paragraphs. Now this: 900 words eating into your morning. Still; it’s an inflation-busting investment, isn’t it? By 2027 this same piece will be 6,200 words long. So just think of the time you’ve just saved yourself. Time that will come in handy for making that new daily commute from Guatemala.

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