I recently took out an insurance policy. Shortly afterwards I found I needed to increase the cover, for which I was ready to pay. The insurance company told me they could not amend the policy. I would have to pay a cancellation charge, and then take out the new, dearer, policy. The argument was approaching violence when they suddenly realised the policy was only thirteen days old, so I was within the fourteen day statutory cooling-off period. No problem - suddenly all smiles - cancel the policy and start again.

My newspaper tells me that a chain of fashion shops, finding the going tough last year, had to cancel 500, 00 pairs of a certain style of shoes because they were not selling.

What, you will be asking (if you are still with me) have these three things to do with each other, or us? In case you have not seen the rather tenuous connection, it is how to deal with things that have gone wrong.

The paraplegic lady has made the best of the lousy cards dealt for her for the last seventy years. The insurance company stood rigidly on the rules, although they made no sense. The cancelling chain seemed to have no principles whatsoever. One made the best of a bad job, one refused to do what was self-evidently in their best interest, one wriggled out of their commitments.

When is a deal a deal? What happened the ‘my word is my bond?' when did Caveat emptor get cancelled? I begin to wonder. Business is a gamble,

At a certain point you have to make up your mind and put your money where your mouth is, just like a casino. Try telling the croupier you meant to put your chips on red when black has come up. You will feel a large hand lifting you up by the back of your collar.

I do take the newspaper report with a pinch of salt. Half a million pairs of one style seems an awful lot of shoes. Even Misfit Shoes does not dish out orders of that magnitude, but I suppose if it was spread over several colour and minor style variations it could come down to twenty, thirty thousand pairs on each item on the order which does seem more credible.

I cannot reveal who the chain were or what they brought for legal reasons. My pet lawyer is quite clawless and rarely needs to come out of his box. I am sure theirs are otherwise.

Did the company give a moment thought to what the cancellation would do to their supplier? Having entered into a contract of this size, how could they cancel it? Even if the supplier had not yet bought the materials, unlikely, but possible, they would have lost the chance to sell to someone else. Possibly there were a number of suppliers involved, all making that type of shoe, and they came to the conclusion, after some sleepless nights and curses and threats, that going to law would cost more than they were going to lose, so took it on the chin and tried to pick up the pieces.

We have to remember that we are dealing with real people here. Not abstract companies. People, maybe quite poor people, as a lot of our shoes are sourced in developing countries, could easily go hungry as a result.

The company involved is one of the new generation of fashion stores that have opened in the last decade or so. They are not specialist shoe retailers. They may have come to the entirely logical conclusion that selling shoes is not worth the candle, sacked their shoe buyer and closed the department. I don't propose to waste any time finding out the exact circumstances but they do seem to play rough.

But that is surely why we have laws, to protect the weak. The paraplegic lady had no way of getting out of her lifetime contract, so why should someone who changes their mind get out of theirs?

I blame Marks and Spencer. They were the ones who started this idea that if you don't like what you have brought you can bring it back, which is now accepted anywhere, and has spread right through society. There is a delusion in our world just now that a decision is not really a decision, a mistake can always be undone.

Only it can't, as anyone who has been in a car crash will testify. Even at Misfit's humble level we are more and more faced with people who bring shoes back simply because they have changed their minds. I am not talking about the brigade who wear a pair for an party and think we don't know, but customers, if that is the right word, who simply expects us to take back shoes because they have changed their little minds. It is getting to the point where there is no point in taking stock because we don't know how many pairs are out there waiting until their purchasers have a spare moment to pass our way and let us have them back. They are not so much bought as borrowed.

Now things are getting tougher it is time to tighten up. Time for a deal to be a deal, contracts to be stuck to, going from a single pair of shoes to half a million. Time for more old fashioned morality. Sounds unpleasant, and perhaps it is, but as the economic storm clouds gather everything is going to get tougher.

A deal is going to have to be a deal, and a lot of men of straw are going to get blown away.

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