Shopping

I only had two needs: socks and pants, and got them both though I hesitate to say the needs were satisfied. I find nowadays that in order to get pants with any room in them it is necessary to buy ‘sleep shorts’ which are cut a little more generously, presumably to allow for tossing and turning… The only problem was that the colour range consisted of black as in ebony, red as in post-boxes and blue as in azure skies. I chose one each of the last two, and live in hope of not having an accident which will lead to the exposure of the middle bit of me in public!

What we were looking for was a hairdressing set (clippers and scissors and comb), and we found one at a price in the chemist. Then we tried an electrical shop and found another set about $25 cheaper. Finally we asked in a hardware store and they produced just the clippers, made in Germany, where the others were American, which they kept for people wanting to clip their dogs. They were $20 more than the first set we saw! We settled on the electrical shop ones!

The cardigan is a bit shorter than I like so will knit another 3 inches on I think. I want it to cover a mad garment – most un-me – I bought on an orgy. It’s long, mid-thigh in light wool – grey stripes going round the way – and black, and I bought a pair of grey leggings to go with it and a blue pair and a super pair of Angora ones to go with my jersey same colour, same materials – and, much duller, 3 polo necks. I bought a super navy jacket, buttons to the neck, too.

We went into town last week to look for a watercolour portrait book – I spent literally hours in some 3-4 shops and finally spent nearly $85 on two I don’t really like. I am so silly. I also fell for a summer dress – v. pretty material reduced to $30 – but a size too large and it didn’t shrink as I expected – and shirt for X’s birthday which even tho’ it’s ‘small’ looks much too big for him – so on the whole it wasn’t a success.

One of the big stores is closing down and we went in yesterday looking for bargains. X had no luck at all, but I seemed to be spending money like a drunken sailor, and went on doing so after we left there – ending up with a pair of trousers, 2 shirts, 2 V and Ps, a pair of slippers, a new gadget for my machine for cutting rebates and grooves, yards and yards of dark denim to make a darkroom and a book on the resurrection – oh, and a book of music for my treble recorder which I acquired some time ago on another minor spending spree, and am now trying to learn in place of the penny whistle.