The Fear

There are days when my decision to leave my job with nothing to go to feels less like this:


and more like this:

Let's talk about what "frugal" means.

(Bland American actress) Zoey Deschanel saves three quarters of her £60,000 a month salary by living frugally? Gee, can I have some tips on how I too could manage on just £180,000 a year?

Patronising Pollyanna

Hollywood career, long happy marriage to a film star, unimaginable wealth and comfort - why on earth wouldn't Goldie Hawn be happy?

I can't believe she actually has the audacity to write a book about it. Believe me, love, you have nothing of value to teach me.

Grrrrr!

Trauma two.

Correction. It was a live mouse, just about. He, and the slipper, have been placed in a nearby hedge.

Trauma

The kitten hid a dead mouse in my slipper, which I then put onto my bare foot.

You've got to be in it to win it

I wake up to an e-mail informing me I have matched numbers on the lottery!




£5.



Stupid Thunderball.

A poor outlook for the species

My kitten, who until three weeks ago was perfectly happy to hunt leaves and twigs, brought the same mouse in four times between 7.25am and 11am today. After three rescues, my sympathy towards the hapless rodent had somewhat diminished.

Have you swiped your Nectar card?

At the time of writing, a famous TV chef has just been caught shoplifting goods via the self-service tills at his local supermarket. I'm full of admiration, not for his kleptomania but the fact that he managed to steal so much when I can't even get the dastardly machinery to allow me to purchase a doughnut without incident.

Self-service tills seemed like such a good idea in theory, didn't they? Unfortunately, like cutting a straight fringe on a wriggling four-year-old or installing a rollerblind, it's never as easy as the professionals make it look.

Many's the time I have watched my husband try to locate the bar code on a pack of Tenderstem Stir Fry, becoming increasingly tetchy and convinced that I have married an imbecile, before impatiently hissing “It's on the bottom! It's ALWAYS on the bottom!”. For my part, I must be incapable of the seemingly simple task of Putting Things Down, because after every fourth or fifth item I scan, the perky woman who lives inside the machine cries “Unexpected item in bagging area! Store approval needed!” (Next I wait two minutes for a bored teenager to wordlessly swipe her card down the side of the screen, while all around me furtive teenagers are stuffing their rucksacks full of contraband Galaxy and Red Bull, and a respectable-looking lady is putting a George Foreman Health Grill through as portobello mushrooms.)

They're no quicker or easier than going to a real person. It doesn't cost less. About the only advantage left, then, is when purchasing “embarrassing goods” - don't be coy now, you know exactly what I mean! Tragically, Murphy's first law states that the more intimate the contents of your carrier bag, the more likely it is to tear/rip/burst when you pick it up, exposing your Preparation-H and verruca socks to the world. Murphy's second law states that your boss, next door neighbour or would-be love interest will be the kindly passer-by who picks them up for you.

Insert trite analogy of choice for leaving job here.