Usually, in the newsagents, I keep my gaze chastely focused at or below eye level. Once in a while, however, purely for the purposes of sociological research, I allow it to drift upwards towards what the larger chains hilariously term the Men's Lifestyle section. I am always amazed by the continued existence of the top shelf. If there's one business you'd have thought a decade or more of the internet would have killed off, it would be printed pornography. It may not be in the best of health - some venerable titles have closed, sales of what remains are perilously down - but just to find anything left up there near the ceiling is a shock.

Internet pornography is free, moving (as in the pictures move, as opposed to them being especially affecting), unlimited and private. And you don't have to keep your computer on top of a wardrobe. (But you do have to hit Clear History afterwards, ahem, friends tell me.) Printed magazines are expensive, the content is static and finite and they are of course, mortifyingly embarrassing to buy. So mortifying, that in more than three decades hanging about in newsagents, I have never seen anybody so much as reaching, let alone actually buying. I suppose it is in the nature of the purchase to wait for the shop to be empty. That's what those same friends used to tell me anyway.

My wife worked in a newsagents as a Saturday girl when she was about 16. This one young man would come in for the monthly edition of his preferred reading matter, retrieve it from on high and take his time sidling up to the counter. Nicola would then take great delight in faffing about until other customers had come in. She would then pretend not to be able to see the cover price. “How much is Knave, Jackie?” she would shout across to her colleague. “I dunno Nicki,” Jackie would shout back, “isn't it the same as Fiesta and Escort and all those other mucky magazines?”

Sadly history does not record whether the young man claimed to be buying the magazine for the in-depth articles about vintage racing cars and Second World War seaplanes, but no doubt shopgirls had got similar routines going all over the country. I suppose in another few years, the top shelf will be empty, gone from the British high street along with travel agents, post offices, traditional pubs and betting shops, and teenage girls will have to look for other ways in which to embarrass teenage boys.

Yesterday's news

While new technology has revolutionised many businesses, one area on which it has made mystifingly little impact is motorway signage. I don't mean the permanent blue and white signs, they do their job very well, I mean the electronic signs that pop up to tell you not to drink and drive or to take a break or it's all gone pear-shaped after Junction 22, or at least it had three hours ago. With cameras everywhere, I'd have thought these signs might have got a lot more detailed and responsive by now. As it is, they're either platitudinous or cryptic and nearly always out of date. Can anyone explain why?

Rank outsider

Meanwhile, back to smut. A student friend was attending a statistics lecture at university. Not the most promising subject for a snigger, you might think, but you'd be wrong. The lecturer was Chinese. Her English was excellent yet heavily accented, so she tended to pronounce the letter R in the manner of the late Roy Jenkins. Therefore her emphasis on the importance of precise and correct ranking in her specialism did not produce dutiful note-taking so much as an outbreak of giggles rippling forwards from the back row.

Confused by this reaction to her flagship point, the lecturer repeated how vital it was in statistics that results be ranked accurately. More laughter. Getting the ranking right, she reiterated, was the key to an understanding of the subject. Knuckles stuffed in mouths, shoulders heaving, tears running down cheeks. Some factors were always going to rank higher than others, the lecturer thundered yet again. Cue mass exit via a side door.

Hot potato

Staying with juvenile double entendres, when a word takes on a new meaning, and an older generation is unaware of the shift, opportunity knocks. To my children, a “hotty” means an attractive, sexually desirable person. To someone a little older than me, however, a hotty is an affectionate abbreviation for a hot water bottle.

Imagine my children's amusement, therefore, when we arrived at a hotel over the holiday season and the owner announced that in view of the sub-zero temperature, she'd arranged for a couple of hotties to be put in each of the beds. “Blonde and brunette, I trust?” I was desperate to ask, arching an eyebrow like 007. Instead, I managed simply to thank her for her kindness. In the background, the children got on with the serious business of nudging each other in the ribs and smirking.

Times Recommends

• Preening populism has put us off democracy
• In 2009 as in 1931, debts must be repaid
• Here’s where all the women get off