Big Brother Returns for the Summer Holiday- Day Five: The Shopping Escapade

So. The honeymoon is truly off.

For the past forty eight hours me and my sister have been sniping at each other or giggling like lunatics whenever we encounter each other (on the stairs, coming in or out, fighting over food in the kitchen). I've officially slipped back into the 'home from uni, bored of the house and famlee' mode that sets in with every returning student.

On the plus side, I have just drunk pretty much an entire bottle of really nice Cabernet Sauvignon to myself in front of the TV, while trying to write. I think it's helped, both with the fiction and the non-fiction. Mr B. Black, of Black Books Ltd, I salute and join you.

The life force of me, and, by extension, the universe.

On the even more postive plus side, after an extremely arduous adventure of getting there this morning (I was navigating, but the directions were awkwardly backward- what fool, father, doesn't use multimap these days if the car has no sat nav and the driver no idea of the destination?), I ended up in Milton Keynes shopping centre with my mum and sister.

It was here that I immediately reverted to being (albeit bearded and cynical) a five year old. Clothes and shoes were bought for me. I chatted to lovely Topman ladies who I'm fairly sure thought I was a) interesting and b) mental, therefore interesting. I was forced by said Topman lady, sister and mum to walk up and down and, giving me a sudden rash to the face that heated the entire shop, show them where my toe was in the shoe. I got into an argument about law with the troglodyte, monosyllabic mutterer in H&M about false advertising and what he should sell the jacket to me for, flashing the NUJ card in the hope he'd see authority and wee himself into discounting it for me. It didn't work, but I left vindicated that he'd asked me what I meant by 'obliged'.

So now I have an apparently new sense of style. I argued that I had some sense of good clothes beforehand, but my sister had none of it. I did, by the way, readers. Ignore what the silly woman says.

In other news, it is ridiculously warm today. And I've found fraternity in my cousins and myself all being set against the silly notion that a bearded man on a cloud is doing anything, let alone is in control.



And, on top of that, I rustled up an exquisite dinner of bolognaise and spaghetti. Once again, the key ingredients of my life-



and



came in massively handy. I'm a genius with some food, obviously. That is, those two ingredients.

And fried eggs.

And tea. Now, I'm going to scribble all over and probably burn the last few hour's rambling scribbles. TTFN.