Lynne Truss on the inpenetrable maze that is online shopping Having just assured my mum that shopping for groceries online was the easiest thing in the world, I confidently tapped in my password the other day (while in urgent pursuit of juice, pasta and special bedtime dog biscuits) and the blinking thing didn't work. Instead of opening up a wonderful world of 327 pasta options helpfully presented in an order based on my previous purchase history, it took me to a page with "Forgotten your password?" on it, which was most annoying. Of course, there was no box for me to reply, "Nay, I have not forgot my password, sir! Perhaps thou hast forgot my password. I don't know why, but when I get uppity, I always turn into a Capulet. No, there was just a box for me to enter the same (correct) password again, with the predictable result of the same page popping up with "Forgotten your password?" on it, as if we hadn't already taken this unsatisfactory conversation just about as far as it would go. But this time there was a difference. There were now two words for me to transcribe into a box! And this was when I started to get even more annoyed, because a) I didn't know why I was being asked to do this, and b) one of the words was in plain type and was a proper word, such as "UMBRAGE," while the other was a confusing mixture of black curly letters on white background, and white curly letters on black background, which appeared to say either "splungfirg," or maybe "splringling." I looked at it in despair. "Now, whatever you do, don't over-think this," I told myself. Don't get sucked in. But, of course, I did. I studied this bunch of letters for 20 minutes - the exact time it would have taken me to go to the shop - and then carefully entered the word "splungfirg." The page instantly refreshed itself with a new pair of words ("MURDEROUS" and "doihwpl," or was it "dwilorgd"?) with a message to say I had failed the previous test - and, by the way, just to show there were no hard feelings, "Forgotten your password?" Well, this was all very annoying, but also quite worrying. Why was I being led down this maddening circular path? Was it possible that, for reasons of its own, my computer had cunningly connected me - via the Ocado website - to a page for applicants to the CIA? It was far-fetched, but at the same time the only rational explanation. Were I ever to pass this damned word-identification test, I would doubtless move on to the next stage, in which I'd be asked how to handle a hypothetical siege situation in North Africa, with three men down and only one shot left in the clip. Or maybe it would say: "A condemned Muslim terrorist tells you that an American POW has been turned. You are a crazed, wayward and lonely female agent with beautiful hair, suffering from infantile omnipotence. Hey, this would make a good plot for a TV drama series, come to think of it, so forget I just said all that. Yet again, however, there was no box in which to write, plaintively: "I don't know how I got into this. But I promise that if you let me go, I will never tell anyone about the splungfirg. Keep the special bedtime dog biscuits; but please, please, let me go. I tussled with this annoying stuff for about an hour and finally called Ocado. They solved the problem quite efficiently, but when I told them I resented the difficulty of the "type the words you see" thing on their website, they just said "Mm? Ah. Mm" - which I recognised at once as a deliberately non-committal response, implanted by rigorous training. I also said that I didn't understand the purpose of the "type the words you see" thing, and they said "Mm? Mm" to that as well. I wanted to add that, while I was on the subject, I also disliked the tone of "Forgotten your password?" - which smacked of condescension - but in the end I didn't bother. I could see which way the wind was blowing. Whether the word was really "splringling," of course, I will never know. But if I'd put that instead, just think of what might have been. Not only might I have a decent supply of 10 o'clock snacks for the doggy right now, but also my own gun, a hotline to Langley and full diplomatic immunity. This article also appeared in SEVEN magazine, free with the Sunday Telegraph.