The highlight of the day today was lunch with a good friend. Which is, as I understand it, the correct way to refer to lunch with someone to whom you have just given the web address of your blog. Along with the requisite intellectual discourse and witty banter, I enjoyed my freebie of the day before I’d even arrived – in the form of a parking ticket offered up by a kind shopper who had clearly overestimated the duration of her January Sales Stamina (a problem I can’t say I’ve ever encountered). 

Incidentally, a tip: standing in front of a parking meter and sporting a severely perturbed look does seem to result in the proffering of tickets with a fair bit of time remaining on them. I was not, in fact, troubled by my inability to purchase my own ticket (there’s an app for that), but simply calculating the best way of factoring in visits to as many of my favourite shops on the way to and from my lunch appointment. And, as my face clearly revealed, there is a high level of anxiety attached to the risk of missing out on a bargain.

During lunch, I was able to carry out a random act of kindness, by randomly and kindly offering one slice of my @RealEating Welsh rarebit to my lunch companion. The fact that I was a) full and b) completely unable to bear the pain of seeing such a delicacy go to waste in no way undermines either the randomness or kindness of this selfless act.

I also received a thoughtful and generous gift of a range of @GrownAlchemistU skincare items so incredibly posh that their labels are in French. Which is, as we all know, the marker of the very highest quality.

On my way back to the car, I suffered two disappointments. Firstly, and I was asking for this one, I purchased a Banana Armour (basically a massive hollow yellow phallus) with which I intended to protect the lining of my favourite @orlakiely handbag from squashed-banana-seepage. It seems the EU has got to bananas, but not yet to their armour. Bending a ramrod-straight banana into its curved plastic sheath doesn’t quite achieve the objective of maintaining its structural integrity. Disappointment #1. Secondly, I spotted a highly desirable and (unless you’re Scarlett O’Hara) pretty much unwearable ball gown-style dress in the window of my all time favourite boutique. Accompanied by a sign announcing loudly, ‘up to 50% off all sale items’. Now, I used to work in marketing. I know the tricks. Up to 50% can feasibly include 1%. So I won’t be caught out by their fancy promotional schemes. Cue a confident swagger as I stride across the road to grab my bargain. Which, it turns out, does in fact have a whole 50% off. 50% of a £750 price tag, that is. I may not be caught out by fancy promotional schemes. By my own overdraft limit, however, maybe so. Disappointment #2.

Squashed bananas and fancy ball gowns aside, however, a pretty good day. All that glisters may not be gold, but who needs gold when you’ve got Welsh rarebit?