No PJs

I hate bras, tights (or pantyhose as the Americans call them), and high heels (ever since breaking my ankle wearing them at work).

I love pajamas and slippers. One of the first things I do when I get home from a hard day out is to take off my shoes, slip on my slippers and take of my bra. People who pop round for visit unannounced have been known to catch me in my pjs and slippers in the early evening. Or possibly on a Sunday afternoon. If I had my way we would all wear PJs and slippers all the time.

A few weeks ago one of the largest supermarkets implemented a ban on customers wearing their pajamas into the store. Journalists have drawn similarities between this ban and the recent decision by the French government to ban the wearing of burqas in public. They maintain it is as much a cultural affront to wear pajamas to the supermarket as it is to wear a full veil on public transport or into the police station.

There's a huge difference between wearing pajamas and the burqa. The burqa is a symbol of submission and dominance. They obscure your identity and all non verbal methods of communication like facial expressions and body language. Jammies are a symbol of the desire to be free and comfortable. They obscure, well, nothing at all.

Now I've got some very nice pajamas. So nice in fact, I'm not sure you could readily tell the difference between some tracksuit bottoms and my jammies. How do they know I don't dress like that? In fact, those bubble trousers that Vanilla Ice wore could have easily have been mistaken for pajamas.

And the real cultural affront is the length (or lack thereof) of some very small skirts I have seen some girls (and some older women) wear. Or those tiny little skimpy outfits the youngens wear on a Friday/Saturday nights out when they could easily be mistaken for selling their wears by putting it all out on display. Shouldn't they ban those little pieces of string some girls call skirts.

And what about those trousers that boys wear that hang down past their hips threatening to fall down to their ankles at any moment causing them to fall and me and my children to trip over them and get all mucked up by their greasy hair. Now that is a health and safety issue just waiting to happen.

What next? Are they going to enforce that I wear a bra? Makeup? Get plastic surgery?

Luckily, I don't shop at Tesco. Well, I used to in an emergency because they are closer than Sainsburys. But not anymore. Sainsburys I hope you are listening. I would hate to have to do all my shopping at the corner shop where they often greet me at 7 am in the morning popping in to grab some milk for my children's cereal wearing my pajamas.