Buying trousers with the Orthodox Jews

We've had a right old day today. It's quite unlike me to start a Sunday with a list of things to do, but we had much to achieve, and by the time we'd had a lie-in and watched the disastrous Andy Murray match in Australia, there wasn't a great deal of time in which to do it!

Top of the list was buying two new pairs of trousers. If I'm to descend into poverty, I'm not starting the process looking like a tramp! It turns out I only have two pairs of trousers in the world. My second best pair has a hole in the crotch and my best pair no longer fastens at the top. We were in Sainsbury's earlier on and they dropped down to my knees, followed by my boxer shorts, because the elastic has gone in them. If it hadn't been for my duffle coat, I would have bared my behind to an entire shop of people! It's times like this that you have to acknowledge that things have got a little out of control!

We went to Brent Cross and wandered around between the mirrors (which were everywhere) and the myopic Orthodox Jews (who were also everywhere, holding things they were contemplating purchasing right up to their bespectacled faces!)

I hate shopping. Nathan hates it even more. He gets shopping tummy, which he describes as a sort of anxiety. Nothing seemed to fit and everything seemed to be either made for an anorexia-thin teenaged lad, or modelled on the sort of thing that Michael Portillo wears in his train journeys around Britain show: all mismatched jackets and semi-formal canvas trousers in the garish colours which 65-year old men think of as fun and funky. I panic bought some grey things from M and S and some black things from T K Max. Call me classy if you like, but the good news is that I won't have to deal with another undignified episode in Sainsbury's again!

We came home and I did a stack of admin before finishing the first draft of my new musical's synopsis which is way too long, although I would far rather read a detailed synopsis than something which doesn't have enough information to give me the full picture. I slogged hard to get it done, and finally finished at 9.30pm.

I am resolved to lose more weight. Looking at myself in all those Brent Cross mirrors was not a great deal of fun. I'm thinking of getting a pedometer and trying to walk 10,000 steps in a day. I did that once, about ten years ago, and the weight fell off me. A very close friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is currently wearing a pedometer on her wrist, and confessed to me that, sometimes, when she doesn't have enough steps registered, she puts it on her daughter and asks her to run around for a while. That's how to beat the system!