At the Shelly Bay supermarket on Wednesday - the five percent off day - were more local luminaries than you could shake a stick at. Well, three, anyway. The average age of shoppers, at about 3pm, was well over 150, by my calculations. It set me to wondering.

Why are older people so much wiser about money? The answer, of course, is that they have less of it and a reduced ability to earn it. So the moral is clear: act old when you're young, and you'll be better off when you are old. Simple, eh?

I have long argued that the economic well-being of a society can be gauged by the cost of a two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola. In Bermuda, it's $4.09. In the UK, it's the equivalent of $2.68, although it can usually be found on sale for the equivalent of less than $1.70. In the US, they pay you to take the stuff away. There can't be a great deal wrong with Bermuda, economically, if Coke costs more than gasoline.

Barritt's no longer makes (ie assembles) Coca-Cola in Bermuda. Time was, the bottles said "Proudly made in Bermuda by proud Bermudians with pride", or something like that. Now, when it should say "Proudly imported by Bermudians", it says "Drink Coke and have sex", or that sort of thing. If that idea were true, given how much Diet Coke I drink, I'm behind by more than 50,000 women. Bummer.

The MarketPlace had Sunkist orange soda on sale this week, 12 bottles of 591ml each for $7.99. Is that a bargain? The reason for the sale is that the bottles are date-marked August 10, which means they should be consumed within a few days, but I think that's hogwash in this case. Sure, an apple pie that says "Best by next week" is almost certainly best by next week, but a bottle of soda, it seems to me, ought to be good for a few days past the date stamped on the bottle lid.

You could tell by looking that the Sunkist was a bargain, which is good news because no one on the planet knows what 591ml is. The bottle says that 591ml equals 20 fluid ounces, but that doesn't help much, does it? When I got home, I did the maths: 12 times 591ml (if an ml is what I think it is, i.e. a thousandth of a litre) equals 7.092 litres. If that's right, the Sunkist cost $1.126 a litre, whereas Coke at $4.09 for two litres costs $2.045 a litre. And five percent off on Wednesdays.

All this can be trumped by buying one of the no-name brand sodas that sells for about $2 for two litres, which, with or without five percent off beats everything else into a cocked hat, if you can stand the taste of the no-name brands and like drinking soda out of a hat.

A lot of work, isn't it? Who cares? Well, I do, and perhaps you should. I saved quite a lot of money on my soda bill this week by paying attention. It didn't take any time, because I was in line anyway. Something similar happens almost every week. You don't get rich quick, but it all helps.

The lesson is: shop around, think and buy groceries on Wednesdays.

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Your faithful correspondent was nearly killed on Bermuda's roads this week. Opposite the Swizzle Inn is a fiendishly complicated set of yellow boxes that lead from Wilkinson Road to Blue Hole Hill, leading either to the Causeway or to Dub City, depending on which way you're going. The only way to meet the legal requirements of the yellow boxes, if you're aiming for the Causeway, is to wait until everyone in front of you has gone, and then take your turn.

When I did just that, it wasn't good enough for an old guy in an old truck behind me. He stared honking and screaming when I wouldn't move forward to sit illegally motionless in the yellow box. I shouted something back at him, about his turn coming along, and then, when it was safe and legal, off I went.

Incensed with road rage, the ol' timer decided to overtake me as we went past the Swizzle. His van, sadly, wasn't up to it, so I zipped forward, the better to keep him alive.

He took another run at me on the Causeway. Out he swung, intending to overtake, but his clunker wasn't going to make it before the bus coming at us would have made minced meat of him and probably me too. I had to either slow down or speed up, because if I did neither, old Gramps was going to be in the obituary column for sure.

Everyone survived, but really. Should we expect to die every time we venture out onto the roads?

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You can't make it up: a member of the Marine Police Unit is called Inspector Cosham.

* * *

For musician Rick Ross, Bermuda remains another world, one to which he cannot gain admission. Seems "the Immigration" mistook Mr. Ross for one Freeway Rick Ross, a drug dealer either doing hard time or recently released from same. Ah well.

As you know, my weekend name is Snoop Cromby Cromb. I originally wanted it to be Freeway Roger Crombie, but being British, it would have had to have been Motorway Roger Crombie, which lacks the necessary pizzazz.

It would have been ironic if the old geezer had killed me, though, and that had been engraved on my tombstone.

My friends, by the way, call me ... ah, who am I kidding? I don't have any friends.

* * *

It was amusing to watch Bill Clinton in action as President Obama's bag man this week, racing to rescue two young journalists from the clutches of North Korean psycho Kim Jong-Il. Imagine what the women must have thought when they were handed over to Slick Willie: from the frying pan unto the liar.

Given Clinton's appalling lack of self-control with the chicks, these two might have been better off being detained by the weirdo North Korean, who will, I understand, be succeeded as President by his idiot son Kim W Jong-Il.

Then, too, it was curious to see the Clinton/Gore combo achieve something positive.

One tragic dimension of the affair related to Hannah Lee, the daughter of one of the rescued reporters.

In the few months her Mum had been away, President Obama had saddled little Hannah with $3 trillion in debt.