Retail (couple) therapy

Fella is at a concert tonight so I’m waiting for him to come home, and once I’m done here I’ll be cooking us dinner before we settle in for the night.

Today has been a nice day. A lie in, before a breakfast of *ahem* and a morning spent lazing in front of the television. After going into town we had lunch in a small sushi restaurant in Soho where I bumped into a former neighbour of mine of whom I was always rather fond – I hope she (a very bubbly Malaysian lady) and I can meet up again soon as she was always a lot of fun! Anyway, after that Fella and I began some serious retail therapy. Shoes; coat; watch; cufflinks. All for me! Bless his heart if Fella wasn’t following me round – entirely without complaint - some all afternoon staggering under the weight of things that had caught my eye. I do like clothes shopping, gentle reader; as some unfortunate Frenchists found out today, many a slip ‘twixt a mirror and me when I am cooing over a new purchase.

I did a bit of Christmas shopping too; a nice journal bound in leather itself inlaid with semi-precious stones for one of my cousins, and a hand-made Egyptian jewellery box for my mother. All in all I spent heaps of lovely lolly. Well, ‘tis Christmas, and in Strumpetville retail therapy is prescribed by any doctor worthy of the name…

Now all I really need to do, bar a few more gifts for the known knowns who are my friends and family, is find the something for the known unknown who is my boyfriend. Hmmmm… Asking him outright has, annoyingly, failed to yield results. I want it to be right and I have the double burden of the unknown unknown that is his family’s judgement and the bar of Paris to at least match. So I reeally do want to know at some level what to get him; what gifts he would like most.

The shopping today is also in part to prepare us for the trip to Germany next week. Time has stolen a march and in four days we shall be flung across the sky in an aluminium death-tube full of other people’s farts to confront under Why There Are No Grandchildren. To be fair it’s also largely Because I Wanted To (and that, as an aside, has been the justification for a lot of what has been blogged about this past couple of years) but really both of us are beginning to get a tad nervous and taking this time to be together, to be sure we look our best and to know how we plan to do things before we go, is proving to be very important.