Ever since I can remember, tow-along shopping trolleys have been a ‘grandma thing’.

Cool people didn’t walk along towing grandma trolleys. Even if they could barely juggle armloads of parcels, or their fingers were slowly turning purple from stretched handles of plastic bags, they would manage.

Shopping trolleys were the things you saw in cartoons about grandmas. They were shorthand for ‘this person is old and daggy’. Oh sure, everyone acknowledged that they were useful things for the old dears to have, but… it wasn’t a good look.

Then, a couple of years ago, I heard a Wendy Harmer podcast where she cheerfully admitted using a Granny Trolley. Now Wendy Harmer is definitely cool, in an appealing daggy kind of way – if you know what I mean. Suddenly the tow-along trolley edged up a notch in the acceptability stakes.

But still, I decided, I wouldn’t be caught dragging one along behind me.

Until today.

I caught a bus to the nearby shopping mall, and while I was there bought an item that came in a large box. Awkward to carry, even in a bag. I juggled the box and my handbag and another plastic bag with more items in it, and I found myself wishing that I owned “one of those shopping trolley things”.

The idea grew and grew. I noticed everyone around me who was towing a Granny Trolley (actually one was a speedy-looking young gent in his thirties) and finally decided that I had to have one. Before my arms fell off.

I found one in the Reject Store. $15 later, I was happily towing a bright red Granny Trolley of my very own, zipping around the various levels of the mall and pitying all heavily-laden shoppers who didn’t own such a wonderful thing.

I think I’ll go back and shop some more, just for the fun of it…