Fuck You, Dixons

I hate this advert.

"Get really terrific service finding something you want, and then fuck the shop over because you can get it more cheaply on a website where they don't need to pay the overheads of shop rental, display items and helpful salespeople who know what they're talking about. Eventually the shop will close down and the helpful salesperson will lose his job, and your high street will be a desolate wasteland, and the only place left on earth to shop will be dixons.co.uk, and you'll be screwed because next time you want a TV there won't be a display item or a helpful salesperson, but who cares, because you got a cheap TV."

If you want to shop online, shop online, but don't use the real world to browse. You're only getting it cheaper because you're stealing expertise.

Discount Madness

As I once bought a (very beautiful, and surprisingly inexpensive) desk from the Conran Shop, I occasionally get invited to their promotional evenings, and today I received one of their flyers in the post.

"As a special Conran Shop customer you are invited to the launch of our new Well Considered collection," it reads. "15% DISCOUNT will be available on purchases of all products made during the evening." Woo! They have put "15% DISCOUNT" in capitals and bold and everything. Then the flyer continues: "However, as Well Considered prices are so good, these will not be included."

So they are inviting me to the launch of a range... and incentivising me to buy anything other than that range.

Interesting strategy.

How Not To Talk...

As I'm out and about during the day, I often see adults with learning difficulties out with their carers. Over time, I have got to recognise the carers' way of speaking: very firm, very clear, a touch of what from the outside sounds like patronising but probably only the result of speaking to adults in a manner and vocabulary we're more familiar with using for children, sometimes a note of exasperation if the carer is having a particularly trying day. Checking out the new Waitrose in Angel today, I heard one such carer obviously on the edge of losing his temper with his indecisive charge, lecturing them on the correct way to buy pasta sauce. And then I turned around. It wasn't an adult with learning difficulties. It was his girlfriend.

Super-Maman To The Rescue!

My mother is amazing. She went to John Lewis and got them to agree to repay the cost of the assembly of the filing cabinet. I have no idea how. I asked her "were you armed?" and she said "yes" but I think she didn't hear me properly because of bad reception on her mobile phone. But we can't entirely rule out the use of weapons. The only thing I can say for sure is that I have seen my mother when she is angry, it doesn't happen often but by god it is terrifying.

Super-Maman 1, John Lewis 0. Next time England needs a new coach, I think we know who to call.

I Need A Hero. With A Screwdriver.

Have been Twittering about the filing cabinet of doom but this is deserving of a real blog post.

Perhaps it seems strange that I would want a filing cabinet. But I am self-employed and work from home and I have a lot of paperwork. Those Polish book contracts need to go somewhere. Also have been all excited reading a book called Getting Things Done - in life, I dearly aspire to be the type of girl who Gets Things Done - and one of the key instructions in Getting Things Done is that I need a decent filing system.

So I ordered a filing cabinet form John Lewis. Looks innocuous, doesn't it? Also, expensive. But there's a lot of metal in there - 32 kg of metal, and 32 kg of metal costs. And I am willing to invest that money in Getting Things Done, because if this were a Mastercard advert, Getting Things Done would be priceless.

This is not a Mastercard advert, and what is actually priceless is having 32kg and £259 worth of filing cabinet in 214 pieces on the floor of my study. I have self-assembled before. I am an Ikea veteran. But this is above and beyond. There are bits you have to glue. Glue, I tell you. And the pieces are all referred to by five-digit numbers, except those that have one or two letter codes. There are 15 pages of instructions. There are 27 diagrams each with an average of four sub-diagrams. There are ten different types of screw. That's a whole Kama Sutra of DIY right there.

Here is what the book Getting Things Done has to say on the subject of assembling flat-packed filing cabinets:

That's right. NOTHING.

Meanwhile, I am just a girl with a screwdriver. Not even a sonic screwdriver (wherefore art thou Doctor?) And I am manifestly not going to Get This Done.

I made a pitiful call to John Lewis. I believe that the words "I'm a single girl" may have passed my lips. I have no shame. (My mother pointed out that saying "I'm a single man" would not have helped my cause in quite the same way. First sign of DIY and my feminist credentials go flying out of the window.) I explained about the 15 pages of instructions and the 214 parts. I reminded them that this thing cost me £259 already. I swore that I was not inexperienced in flat-packing, but that I had never seen anything like this in my life. I think I finally broke them with the mention of glue. The nice woman on the phone is going to discuss it with her supervisor. I am hoping they will send me a man with a screwdriver. Second hope: they will allow me to return it despite torn packaging. Otherwise I am going to have a mountain of Not Got Done metal on the floor of my study until the end of time.

Lipgloss Doooooooom: an update

The sorry tale of my lipgloss doom has been recorded elsewhere in these pages, but to summarise: to my enduring distress, perfidious Clinique decided to dispense with the perfect lipgloss that I have been wearing for years, and replaced it with some kind of repulsive pink-tinged superglue.

On the advice of fabhat of askhat fame, I thus made purchase of a replacement gloss from Shiseido, which, as promised, is slick, shiny, non-sticky, long-lasting, shimmery, and a gorgeous and flattering shade of red ('Ruby Luster'). I love it.

As I handed over my money, I remarked to the shop assistant about the horror of my Clinique experience and my relief at this excellent solution. Oh, she said, we're discontinuing these as well.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY??????

Just had to share...

...this sensational (and long) article by Linda Grant on shopping.

Lipgloss Doooooooom

OK, I know that these posts are not interesting for most people. But I DON'T CARE. It's MY blog, and I am the one in LIPGLOSS DOOM. I think there is going to be more SHOUTING on this post. YES. Because I am in DESPAIR.

I've never been much of a person for make-up, but lately I have given in, because it was undeniable that wearing a bit of the stuff made me look better, and I am vain like that. So I wear Touche Eclat under my eyes, a bit of mascara and eyebrow pencil, Benetint on my cheeks, and until now I wore Clinique lipgloss most days. In fact I've been wearing the same shade of Clinique lipgloss for several years, because this particular one suits me and goes with all my clothes. Today, I popped into Selfridges to buy a new tube of it, and discovered that CLINIQUE HAVE STOPPED MAKING IT. This is a DISASTER. So I thought, sensible person that I am, well OK, I will choose the nearest shade that they have and try that. Except NOT ONLY have Clinique stopped making my favourite shade, they have also changed the CONSTITUTION of their ligloss, so that what was a nice, comfortable, easy to wear gloss is now something more akin to a coloured tube of GLUE. In the three seconds between me putting it on and me wiping it off in DISGUST, leaving my mouth looking as if I had been eating CHERRY JAM, half of my HAIR had already STUCK ITSELF to my MOUTH, AND I WAS WEARING IT BACK. My hair. Not my mouth.

So I left the shop with no lipgloss and only a week's worth left of my much-beloved one in the bottom of the tube. DOOM DOOM DOOM DOOMITY DOOM. DOOOOOOOOOOOOM. DOOM.

Ladies, and cross-dressing males. Can you help me? I need a nice, comfortable, non-sticky, non-gluey, coloured gloss, ideally in a plum shade. I am less concerned with durability than with it not welding my hair to my lips every time I go out on a breezy day. Please. Even Obi Wan Kinobe can't help me now.

I Want To Get Younger Every Day, Please. Can You Help Me?

No comments for the books, eh? You lot are an unpredictable bunch.

OK, and not just to get comments, because I am not a comments whore, comments whore I am not, but a question for the ladies: after a war of attrition between myself and my hairdresser lasting several years, I have recently surrendered to using a proper expensive salon shampoo, and I am irritated to reveal that it IS much better and you DO only have to use about a third of the amount so it DOESN'T work out as that much more expensive than the cheap stuff. Thus I am now wondering if I should break out of my habit of using incredibly cheap moisturiser on the basis that even if the expensive ones have whale placentas in them, in the end all you really need is goo + sunscreen. Am I right? Am I wrong? Would you recommend your moisturiser to me? My requirements: I insist on factor 15 in my daycream. I don't tend to bother with any makeup on my actual skin*, so if it could leave my face looking nicer than before I put it on, so much the better. And if it could make me look slightly less like I am getting older every day, and slightly more like I am getting younger, that would make me a very happy bunny. Surely not too much to ask from a small pot of unguent?

*as opposed to mascara, lippy etc.

Best Shop Of The Holiday

Chicken King, Nampula. A shop divided into thirds. One third was a restaurant serving chicken. One third sold frozen chickens to be cooked and consumed at home. And one third sold chicks, chicken feed and vaccines.

Unexpected Irritation In Tesco Area

I don't tend to shop in supermarkets - one of the advantages of working from home is that I have time to go round the local shops and buy there. (Incidentally, credit crunch followers, if you shop for fruit and veg in greengrocers it's miles cheaper than in the supermarket, and you get that warm glow of satisfaction of supporting your local businesses. But I digress.) However, from time to time, such as today, I do pop into Tesco when I have a list of things that can't easily be supplied locally. The queues at the checkout were massive so I went to the self-service check-out instead. Now, Tesco has these signs all over the place encouraging you to bring your own carrier bags, which I always do (am I insufferably smug yet?) This is all well and good - unless you happen to be shopping via the self-service check-out. For those of you unfamiliar with the method, you place your unscanned shopping to one side of the scanner, scan it across item by item, and then put it in bags in the bagging area. If you put something in the bagging area that hasn't been scanned, a voice says WARNING. UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. PLEASE REMOVE IT BEFORE YOU PROCEED. And carries on repeating this and refusing to let you scan anything else until you remove your unexpected item. Your unexpected item, such as a bag, say. Your shopping bag that you brought with you. According to Tesco, this is a highly unexpected item to have in the bagging area. Now, if you keep the unexpected bag very still, sometimes the machine will forget that it's there, so you can carry on shopping. Unfortunately, the moment you move it, say, by placing an item into it, the machine will notice its unexpected presence again and start telling you to remove it again. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: why don't you just put your unexpected bag somewhere else, outside the bagging area? But Tesco have anticipated this. If you scan your item and don't put it in the bagging area, the same voice (annoying woman, like the annoying satnav woman and the annoying voicemail woman and all the rest of the annoying voice women - why are they *always* women?) will warn you PLEASE PLACE YOUR ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA BEFORE PROCEEDING. And then, when you do, of course: WARNING: UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. Apparently, reasoning with the machine that there is no unexpected item in the bagging area, that all there is is a BAG, that you are BAGGING INTO, does not help, nor does shouting at it. Apparently reasoning / shouting at the machine doesn't help appease the gigantic queue that has formed behind you, planet-killers all, who have not brought their own bags. Apparently people in Tesco just won't like you very much at all. Unlike my nice local shopkeepers who like me loads and never act all UNEXPECTED when I produce my own bags. So I don't EXPECT I'm going to go back to Tesco in a hurry.

Things That Do Not Mix Well:

- Wine

and

- The Ryanair Winter Flights Sale

Bargains galore

Flicking through the Amazon sale site, I found it astonishing the merchandise that they thought it necessary to reduce in price. It is impossible to believe that this marketing gimic didn't help Dirty Dancing fly right off the shelf. And as for this film, with a title and synopsis like that, how could it have failed to reach an audience? Mind you, they are only reducing the price by 2p, so maybe it doesn't quite have that must-have-bargain status of a really good sales find.

The Dead iPod Post

My iPod has died. It has ceased to be. It is an ex-iPod.

It wasn't murder - I have done nothing that could have killed it. Nor did it die of old age: it was only two years old. So I can only assume it was suicide, maybe because it had heard the rumour (true) that I was planning to download 'All Night Long' by Lionel Ritchie to listen to on it. A machine can only be pushed so far.

So now I have to buy a new iPod, and when I say have to, I mean have to. Having had one I can no longer live without it. I am breaking out in a cold sweat just thinking of taking the bus without my lovely Pod (though the writer in me in enjoying eavesdropping on other people's conversations). I can't think of anything in my life that I treasure more, aside from my dishwasher. It is an essential.

I do however resent the price of a standard iPod which is £159, quite a lot when you consider I have to pay that once every two years. (Nano is too small.) I no longer feel like I own an iPod, more like I am renting one at vast expense. I can't think of anything else that I own which just stops working like that so suddenly, so traumatically, after such a short time, and is completely unfixable. It reminds me of some relationships I have had. These are not happy thoughts.

There is no point to this post. Just moaning.

RIP iPod.

I have just been to the garden centre and bought lots of plants.

We will now have a sweepstake on how long they will take to die.

Admission

I am in love with the men from Steve Hatt fishmongers in Islington. They are all dead sexy, even if they do smell of fish.