November 18

Shopping sometimes makes me lose the will to live.

Its not that I don’t like things – there are many beautiful clothes, bags, home wares, etc that I covet – it’s just that the reality of the shopping experience falls so short of the desire created by the perfectly art-directed layout of a magazine spread.

Before setting out to Camden today we had to ask ourselves if we were sure we remembered what it was like (yes - noisy, crowded, full of teenage punk wannabes), if we were up for the challenge (probably not – but the desire for a new pair of shoes seemed to outweigh the doubt), and, to confirm, if we were absolutely certain that we wanted to go (well, we reasoned, its close to home and there are plenty of shoe stores). Of course, after trudging from store to store, jostling with the other consumers for a few hours we both got fed up and decided it wasn’t worth the bother.

London would have to be one of the best shopping cities in the world – top designers, up-to-the minutes fashions, the variety and quantity of stores; but this also results in one of the worst shopping experiences - because everyone else wants to be here shopping too (imagine Christmas shopping at Chadstone all year round). Those with money can be pampered in specialist boutiques but the majority fight it out (sometimes literally) in High Street stores.

If I was a rich girl I could just send out one of my many minions with an annotated copy of Vogue and ‘do lunch’ while waiting for the goodies to arrive. All the packages would be delivered in colour-coordinated boxes tied with ribbon (even if the shops usually use bags) and taken into my walk-in-wardrobe by my butler who would …but I digress.

Alas, I am not a rich girl and I’m sure you’ll be as disappointed as me to learn that we did not win the Euromillions lottery £120 million prize draw last night. I put our failure down not to the fact that the odds were 76 million to one, but that B. forgot to buy a ticket when he promised that he would. It was most annoying considering that the jackpot had rolled over 11 times (the maximum allowed) and now the prize money had to be given away – if no one got all seven numbers, people with five numbers and one ‘lucky star’ would win. The odds of that were 5.5 million to one, which is… well I don’t know how to figure it out but it seems a hell of a lot more likely. With our chances being zero, I guess its back to the High Street for us.