Today, purely for therapeutic reasons, I decided to hit the shops in town during my lunchbreak. I was only after one or two things, after all. As I feel a little jaded, faded and washed out, perhaps a nice henna preparation (no, not senna, stop sniggering) would buck up my morale. I've seen some interesting-looking henna in the Body Shop, so up The Parade I went. Although the Body Shop had a great many very interesting products (a nice perfume, I wonder if I can remember which one it was?) it appears to have absolutely nothing in the way of natural hair colourants. I'm willing to swear it used to - I distinctly recall being a little unnerved by the rubber gloves that went with the kit ...

So because that mission was a failure I decided to cheer myself up with a bag of broken biscuits (£1.30) from the home-made cookie shop. Cos they're scrummy, and sometimes I can eat them all before I get home and Ned and the Boy don't find the bag so they never know I didn't share ... (oops! another guilty secret revealed). But they didn't have any broken ones, and for some reason didn't warm to the idea that I could break some myself and still be charged half-price. Another failed mission.

By this time I'd taken up 35 minutes of my half-hour break, and because I still had SimonG's chatroom to visit before I could settle down to work again it was time to head back to the office. Past the pasty shop. This is not a good shop to go anywhere near when they are baking. I have managed to resist temptation so far, but I'm sure one day I shall throw caution to the winds and indulge. But not today. Not when the queue was out of the door.

Retail therapy isn't always very therapeutic.