Deborah Ross: Have you got that lifestyle in my size?

If you ask me...

If you ask me, I am very glad Ocado emailed me an invite to look at "our bold lifestyle magazine" as I have never had a lifestyle, bold or otherwise, and would dearly like one so that, when people come over, I could open the door and say: "Hey, guys, welcome to my lifestyle!"

I would then follow this up with: "Wipe your feet, as I don't want you treading dirt into it" and would offer biscuits that weren't just biscuits, but biscuits in keeping with my lifestyle, once I discover what the lifestyle is, and can then find it. I am hoping you can hang a lifestyle round your neck, like spectacles. A lifestyle, I'm assuming, is no good if you are upstairs and it is down.

And so, with some excitement, I clicked through to Ocado's new magazine, Change, praying I could order my new lifestyle and get it delivered the following day, perhaps by Stanislaw in the Onion Van, between 4pm and 5pm, when I know I will be in. I think it is probably better to order a lifestyle in this way than it is to, say, go through John Lewis, who might deliver when you're out, and leave it with a neighbour, who may open it and decide it's the lifestyle they've always wanted and then refuse to give it back.

I have always suspected, actually, that my neighbour, Val, has somehow stolen the lifestyle that is rightfully mine, with her oak floors and vases of fresh flowers and bespoke kitchen and remote controls with their battery compartments still intact and fruit bowl that contains only fruit, and not a tax return, an old MOT, unopened post and something furry that may or may not have once been a plum.

Val denies it, naturally. "You may want this lifestyle," she says, "and you may envy this lifestyle, but it is my lifestyle, and always has been and now I'll thank you to go away." Relations between us are not good, needless to say.

Anyway, I turned my attention to the magazine, having decided I would splash out – I thought I would go one up from the basic lifestyle model, particularly if it had heated seats – but found, disappointingly, that it didn't offer lifestyles, just lifestyle advice of the usual kind: quit dawdling, try something new, keep chickens, discover a hidden talent and learn the art of dinner-party conversation with Alain de Botton. What a let-down! Although I have ordered Alain, to be delivered on Monday, between 2pm and 3pm, when I know I'll be out. Let Val have him. That'll teach her.