Imelda Marcos Strikes Again

Gah, it's horrible being back at work. I have been having bad dreams for the past two nights, which I attribute entirely to horrible work.

Anyway, more interestingly, I have bought 4 pairs of shoes in the last two days or so and have now decided I must commit myself to making less purchases this year as part of my growing list of New Year's Resolutions. The shoes are actually all from Primark - so I haven't spent a totally horrific amount.

Three of the pairs of shoes are exactly the same - two are exactly, exactly the same as well - the third are just the same style but in a different colour (as I am yet to decide which colour to keep and which to return). The colour choices are pink and turquoise. The turquoise ones however were faulty (the strap on one side fitted with quite some space, the strap on the other side would hardly reach the buckle - I only tried one shoe... fatal error - bear this in mind should you ever go shoe shopping in Primark).

So I went scouring all the Primarks I went anywhere near - including Hammersmith and Marble Arch to find the turquoise in my size - however it seems that I was not the only one to do so - because at Marble Arch, they'd sold out in every colour (pink, turquoise, brown, black, yellow and there might have been one other colour - but it's irrelevant, they were all sold out. I did find another pair of bright pink ones, which I simply couldn't leave behind... until I saw the size of the queue. Damn the hoarding masses).

Similarly, at Hammersmith - where the original purchases had been made - nada. So it seemed that was it. Nothing for it other than to return the turquoise and keep the pink ones - decision made. Until...

I discovered that there was a Primark in Ealing Broadway, which I went to after work today - only to discover that they had both the turquoise shoes and the bright pink shoes in my size. And nobody goes there! I went to the fitting room four times in 45 minutes - as well as browsing for a significant amount of time and trying on four or five pairs of shoes.

They have bra and knicker sets in there for a fiver - a fiver I tell you - how credit crunching is that? And I discovered they have also started doing their bra sets in my size - things that look more like something a small child (actually a not so small child... like an adult) might wear on their head to protect them from the rain - but they still do them. And when I say they do them in my size, they don't really - they do them in what says it's my size, but doesn't fit properly in all sorts of places.

Forget Hammersmith, forget Marble Arch - you wanna shop in Primark and take all the time in the world and then only wait for two minutes in the queue? Then head to Ealing Broadway. But don't tell anyone else. Or I'll be waiting in that queue for ten minutes and that really won't do.

Now returning one of the turquoise pairs is easy enough, I just need to decide how to whittle the other three pairs down to one.