So I finally got round to getting a proper wedding ring. I was hoping the perfect ring would come to me in a dream, delivered on a velvet cloud. But in the end it involved getting off my arse and going to the shops on a crowded Saturday afternoon, ensuring maximum flusteredness. I chose a simple white gold band just to get it over with.

The sales assistant with the pimples and gelled spikes seemed disappointed at the swiftness of my purchase. He had to act fast. "Did you know for only £6.99 I can give you Ring Protection Insurance? You'll be covered for theft or damage for two years!"

"Ummm. Ummm." As soon as someone tries to sell me anything, my face burns red and I lose the ability to form sentences.

"We'll replace the ring right away with one exactly the same, or one of equal value! It's a great deal!"

"Ummm!" Panic closed in. Ring Protection Insurance? What the hell did I want with Ring Protection Insurance for such a boring, inexpensive loop of metal? What kind of moron did he take me for?

I looked at the floor, I looked at Gareth; I riffled through my handbag as if my brain lurked there beside the scrunched up tissues and Breathmints of Yesteryear. "What do you think, Gareth?"

"Well I dunno," he replied helpfully.

"Only £6.99 and we'll renew the policy once the two years up if you're still married."

My brain finally piped up. You don't need bloody Ring Protection Insurance. We have contents insurance! And it's a plain wedding band, not the freaking Crown Jewels! But the words spewed forth regardless. "Okay! Okay! I'll take it!"

"Excellent choice, ma'am."

Back out on the street, I clenched my Ring Protection Insurance Policy in one fist and waved the other wildly in the air. I was spluttering with indignant, white-hot rage; the most infuriating kind because you know it's your own stupid fault and you can't pin it on anyone else.

But that doesn't mean you can't try.

"WHAT the hell happened in there?"

"Yeah, how come you got that Insurance? We have contents insurance."

"I KNOW!"

"And it's just a plain wedding ring. And how will anyone steal it when you never take it off?"

"I KNOW! I KNOW!"

"I bet he literally shat his pants on the spot," Gareth grinned, "From sheer shock that someone actually took that policy."

"Arrrgh!"

"He will be Employee of the Month for sure."

"This is all YOUR fault!" I squeaked. "You were supposed to stop me! You were meant to speak up! You know I am rubbish in these situations. As soon as someone puts on the hard sell I crumble like a block of feta. CRUMBLE!"

"But I didn't think anyone could actually say yes to a Ring Protection Policy."

"You have FAILED!" I cried dramatically as I stomped down the street, "You have FAILED the first test of our marriage!"

Later I poured over the wretched document and realised the policy had a 20-day cooling off period. But it meant I'd have to go back to the shop and say, "Hello, I am a buffoon. Gimme back my seven quid." I calculated that I had wasted almost $25 Australian on this escapade. Whenever I do something stupid with money I always convert it back to Australian dollars, so I can intensify the humiliation and prolong the pointless rage.

This sort of thing happens to me all the time - me handing over money to strangers on autopilot, not fully comprehending until I look down at an empty purse and scream, "SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!". Just last weekend a dreadlocked woman approached me and told me she was a nun, and did I want to buy a CD of some crazy music? Only £7. I immediately opened my purse and told her I only had £2. She said that was more than enough to buy one of her books. So now I am the proud owner of some Hare Krishna meditation tome with no English text whatsoever.

And a few months before that I was walking home, huddled beneath my headphones. A surly teenage chick with a sidekick boyfriend stopped me and started babbling. I turned down the volume and finally heard, "We've got no money for the bus, can you loan us a couple quid?". Ten seconds later I'd handed over all my change and apologised for being so rude with my headphones and all. She looked at coins in her hand, blinking in disbelief.

"Cold today, innit?" said the sidekick boyfriend.

And then they disappeared into the shop next door. Even with my headphones back on I could still hear their laughter. The bus hurtled by, spraying a mucky puddle over my shoes.

"So what does this policy cover you for?" Gareth asked.

"Umm. Theft. And stuff. IF it's in our house."

"Well. For just £6.99 you have bought piece of mind. If there's a freak flood or stealthy burgular, or if a magpie flies in the window in the middle of the night and bites your finger off, we're totally covered."

It's important with intercontinental marriages to educate your spouse on your native culture. So I explained to Gareth that tomorrow is Anzac Day, when Australians and Kiwis honour the bravery and sacrifice of those who served us in war. It's an important day, one of reflection and rememberance. And watching the news for the annual How Many WWI Diggers Have We Got Left Now report.

I decided to make some Anzac biscuits. I think I made my first batch when I was 6; in our house if you were old enough to walk you were old enough to cook, clean and herd animals. I've never been confident with Anzacs, especially after we made them in Year Seven Home Science. My batch huddled like angry little dog turds, but my friend Joanna's were the most uniformly round specimens the world had ever seen. The teacher gave her 10 out of 10 and I just gawked at them, marvelling in their perfection and seething with jealousy. How did she do that? Had she used a compass?

Today's batch were a bloody disaster. I should have realised that cramming sixteen on one tray was too ambitious. I peeked into the oven after ten minutes to see they were advancing faster than the Germans in WWII. It ended up blurring into one giant mutant biscuit, clinging steadfast to the tray. So I hacked away with a big knife and told Gareth how the ladies would bake these for the troops. They'd travel well and last for months thanks to the lack of eggs.

They're not pretty but nothing I cook ever is. But Gareth was quite happy to eat them, saying they were a good example of what could happen to a tin of Anzac biscuits if shot by the enemy. Behold the biscuit shrapnel!

We had a great day out in Glasgow with Rory & Jane in chilly Spring sunshine. I've lived in Scotland over two years but today was my proper visit to Weegieland; the other trips were just stumbling in the dark to concerts. A highlight was the Scotland Street School Museum, a beautiful building designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. There's old classrooms and inkwells and pinafores and chalkboards textbooks and best of all a biscuit tin full of Cuisenaire rods! I plunged my hand right into the pile, the lovely wooden clinky clink noise they made reminded me of how much I hated stinking maths.

There's also some hopscotch thingies in the corridors. We hopped around for ages trying to remember the rules. It was much more of a cardio workout than I recalled.

One of the joys of British supermarkets is the Supermarket Magazine. Free with any purchase, they have all the features found in normal trashy magazines like fashion shoots, recipes and sychophantic reader letters. Sure, all the clothes are from the store and all the recipes are painfully rubbish (Example: Take one slice of OUR BRAND Ham and one slice of OUR BRAND Cheese and place between two slices of OUR BRAND White Sandwich Loaf) but it's free, and there's coupons in the back for 20p off OUR BRAND Instant Coffee.

The Reader Letters are particularly entertaining. There's a lot of people out there who'll say anything for a £20 Tesco voucher or perhaps their lives really were changed by a supermarket. The prize-winning letter in this month's Somerfield magazine was from Mrs C Barker of Hampshire, who sent in a photo of her dog Jack who is apparently fond of bringing in the shopping 'tween his slobbering jaws.

But then in a bizarre twist, this piece of paper been stapled to the page, apparently a last minute addition after the magazine had been printed.

April 2005 Edition - Somerfield Magazine - Star Letter £20 Winner

The star letter on page 15 of the April edition of Somerfield Magazine shows a dog carrying in food for it's owner. This is a lighthearted letter.

Somerfield do not recommend allowing any pet to carry food or to have access to food at any time for hygiene reasons. Pets should be excluded from your kitchen and all work surfaces cleaned before food preparation.

So people, take that ten kilo bag of spuds from Fifi's fangs, tell Patches to spit out the loo roll. Dogs of the world must know their place and stick to fetching newspapers and slippers. Has the world gone bloody mad?

On the surface it looked as wholesome and innocent as any other community centre. The noticeboard stabbed with posters for seniors Tai-Chi. Old metal chairs that scraped and clanked. Young hoodlums in beanies clustered round a half-size pool table. An urn and a stack of polystyrene cups. But today, for me anyway, the community centre was the embodiment of evil. It was Blood Donor Day.

When Gareth first asked if I wanted to give a pint, I flatly refused. I don't have a problem with blood, it's just all the paraphenalia they use to extract it. The big bitey needles, the tourniquet thingy, those vile plastic bags and little tubes. Especially the big bitey needles. When I last got a tetanus shot the doctor had to hold my hand and promise me jelly beans, and I was twenty years old. I hate the needles. But at the last minute I decided to go out of pure pride and stubborness. I couldn't have him thinking I was too wimpy to donate blood, especially afterwards when he'd be all smug and righteous and full of free biscuits.

It seemed I was the only person in town who had a problem with the process. The queue stretched down the hall and halfway out the door. Were they all here out of a sense of caring and community, or had they heard about the free biscuits? As we shuffled to the front I could see the neat rows of metal trolley beds, the donors with narrow tubes spiralling from their outstretched arms. My stomach lurched.

A nurse smiled from behind a clipboard. "Is this your first time hen?"

I nodded meekly.

"You're going to be fine!"

There is nothing less reassuring than someone blatantly trying to reassure you. And as usual, my nerves transformed into a desperate need to pee. "Gareth! Where's the loo?"

"Down the back and to the left."

"Back and to the left. Just like JFK."

I perched on the loo, muttering to myself. You must do this, you big pussy! It's easy! It's painless! Millions of people do this every day and they're totally cool with it! And then I heard frenzied footsteps, a gagging sound and a cubicle door slamming shut. There was a groan. Then a moan. Then, "BLLLLLLLLLUUUURGH!"

After hearing that vomiting concerto I almost ran home, but I skulked back in for my interview with the nurse. I tried my best to flunk, emphasising that I was an Evil Foreigner and lord knows where I've been. But I hadn't travelled to any of the countries on the Dodgy list, I had no recent piercings or terrible diseases and my iron levels were healthy. It seemed my blood was ripe for harvesting.

"And finally, has your partner had sex with another man?"

"No he hasn't," I said, tempted to add that he does have these very tiny lycra shorts that he says are for mountain biking...

"Okay you're fine, just wait on the chairs over there."

"Dammit!"

I'd conjured this whole hellish image of how it would go. I'd be chained the bed and there'd be a giant empty bag hanging from a meat hook while a fanged nurse stood over me screaming, "Bleed more! Bleed more!". But instead the nurses were friendly and chatty and said "ken" a lot.

"Mary, d'ye ken my boyfriend?" said one nurse to another as she directed me to the bed. "He's always snowboarding, right, always getting bruised or breaking his legs and I was getting sick of it. So I made him a pair of shorts out of bubble wrap! Hold out your arm, love."

My veins were even wimpier than I was. As soon as she started squeezing and prodding they disappeared under the surface, refusing to surrender my precious blood. "They looked quite smart! I couldn't keep my hands off his arse, just popping that bubble wrap! Pop pop pop! Ooh, I cannae get a vein here. Mary, we'll need a left arm here! Have we got a left arm free?"

"One over there!"

"Okay, we'll have to move you Shauna, but did I tell you that I got a new phone delivered today? My boyfriend called me to say it had arrived and I asked him to look inside the box, and he says 'Ooh it's covered in bubble wrap, you can make me another pair of shorts!' Isn't that funny? She's not laughing, Mary. Do you think she thinks we're crazy? Off you go hen, over there, you'll be fine!"

My new bed was right near Gareth's. He was already half done, laying back looking calm and relaxed; the seasoned veteran. Bastard. The guy next to him was furiously texting with his non-donation arm.

I had a different nurse, but equally friendly and reassuring as she fired up the needle. My left arm was completely obliging, rolling over and offering her an assortment of plump veins. I scrunched up my eyes and before I knew it the needle was in and I was bleeding for Scotland!

It was a rather strange sensation. I willed myself to think of un-bloody things, rather than wonder what would happen if the nurse decided to go out back for a smoke and forgot to turn off the tap. Would I just drain and drain til I was just a bag of skin and bones and blubber and undigested lunch laying on the bed? I looked over at my husband instead. He was gazing up at the ceiling all sweet and serene. I felt a great rush of tenderness. He has this way of encouraging me to try new things even though I whinge and complain and worry things out of proportion, then he'll just smile and not laugh when I finally discover for myself that it wasn't so scary after all. What a guy. What a catch! And then he looked over, screwed up his face at me and made his lips curl and eyes bulge in what could only be called The Gollum Face. Charming!

Ten minutes later the nurse declared she had the required 568 millilitres and I could now proceed to the refreshment area. PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND, listen up. If you surrender just one pint of blood you can freely select from a range of quality biscuits. I thought they'd just plonk down a shitey packet of Tesco Value Assorted but there was Walkers shortbread, McVities digestives, Tunnocks Tea Cakes and something new to me - the Jacobs Club. Apparently they were an 80s lunchbox staple and not as good as they used to be, but to me it was the euphoric meeting of mint and chocolate AND biscuit. I ate two.

Now that I'm over the fear and feeling smug, I'm quite excited about this blood donor business. They only ask you to do it three times a year, and apparently just three tablespoons of your ruby fluids can save the life of a premature baby! Not only will you feel good for doing something helpful, the nurse will order you to go home and DO NOTHING all evening. Which is quite possibly the most convoluted excuse I've ever used for skipping the gym!

So even if you're a complete and utter wimp like me, why not give a pint? Just lay back and think of the biscuits!

ScotBlood
National Blood Service (UK)
Australian Red Cross Blood Service
Give Life (US)

The Mothership sent a text re the last entry:

Has Tesco ever offered you such a story? I think not!

She’s right you know. I struggle for material without her around. All that travelling abroad and wedding palaver were just desperate, elaborate stunts to get new stories!

I actually have a stinking huge backlog of things to tell you, but right now I am busy writing Very Terse Letters to the Home Office. I feel like a non-citizen right now. My Working Holiday visa has expired, the Home Office has my passport and all I can do is wait around til the Government decides if our lurve is for real or if I'm just Mrs Fraudy McFraud scheming to stay in Scotland because the weather is just that fabulous!

I got a letter yesterday asking me to "please explain the highlighted deposits in [my] bank account". I'd be quite happy to explain the highlighted deposits to you Home Office buffoons, except you did not highlight any deposits! You did not enclose my bank statements with your letter! I poked and prodded every corner of that bloody envelope, I put it under a microscope then through an x-ray machine then held it up to the light in case you wrote it in lemon juice but there was nothing! NOTHING!

So now I have to write to you then after another freaking month or two perhapsd you'll write back to me then I'll write back to you then you'll write back to me and we'll play bureaucratic ping pong til I give up and run screaming back to Australia. Except I can't do that because you've got my bloody passport. Oh happy day.

The Woolworths supermarket was the main attraction of my hometown, the beating heart of a rural metropolis. It was the modern equivalent of a town square, the place to meet and greet and catch up on local news. You'd go in for bread and milk and come out with the latest on hip operations, infidelity scandals and corruption on the local council.

"You'll never guess who I ran into at Woolies the other day," The Mothership would say in our weekly phone calls. She never saw people, she always ran into them. I'd always picture a violent collision of shopping trolleys, her half-price loaves of bread flying into the air and knocking down small children; escapee apples rolling down the aisle. Mum always chose the most fabulous verbs, even the most banal story became action-packed. "On Wednesday or was it Thursday, at 7 o'clock or was it 7.30, I jumped out of bed then dived into the shower, then I ducked down the street, dashed into the post office then zapped into Woolies..."

In a small town like ours there was about a 95% chance you'd run into someone down the aisles. "This will just be A Quick Trip To Woolies!" Mum would promise as my sister and I whined, "So you'll not be waiting in the car, you're coming in with me!" But there was no such thing as a Quick Trip To Woolies. It quite often started in the dairy section with Mum deeply absorbed in raking through what she called the Chuck-Out Bin, a place where marked-down near-death cheeses and yogurts lurked. To her an expiration date was not a recommendation but a challenge.

"Look at this, a six pack of Ski Fruit of the Forrest for only 99 cents!"

"Muuuu-um!"

"There's nothing wrong with them!"

And then suddenly there'd be a tap her on the shoulder, followed by a chirping voice, "Hello Sharon!"

The Mothership would spin around in a flash, a welcoming smile automatically pasted on her face. She was used to this. It could be a neighbour, a colleague, a relative you didn't like very much, or often in Mum's case, the parent of one of the kids she taught. They always had something to say and didn't mind taking half an hour to say it. They barricaded her in with their trolleys so she couldn't escape.

Sometimes it was someone interesting that you'd genuinely want to catch up with, but it was more fun to watch when it wasn't. She'd nod and smile at their scintillating stories with her arsenal of phrases like "Oh really", "You're joking" and "That's terrible!". It looked like she had their undivided attention but she was actually busy stopping our attempts to replace Chuck-Out Bin Yogurt with chocolate bars.

She could get stopped half a dozen times in one shop. Tap tap tap... Hello Sharon! Spin, smile, story time! Over and over again. It was incredibly tiresome for a couple of kids who were huuuun-gry and just wanted to go hooome. Rhi and I would amuse ourselves by spying on other people's trolleys and making snap judgements on their contents, a habit we never grew out of. Ooh look, they've got Neopolitan icecream and topside steak. And it's not Home Brand Neopolitan either, the bastards!

Even when I grew up into a post-university sullen and unemployed bum, The Mothership would still drag me into Woolies; apparently I still wasn't old enough to wait in the car. These expeditions filled me with terror. I didn't have Mum's diplomacy skills. Who would we run into today? What would they ask me? How much of an idiot would I look like? What if I saw one of my old teachers and they found out their swotty student has amounted to naught? There was nothing worse than being confronted with people from the past when the present and future are looking rather shoddy.

Most times we shopped late at night - for me it meant less chance we'd see someone we knew, for Mum it meant a greater chance the BBQ chickens would be reduced to half price. I'd still send her out in front of me, like a canary down a coal mine. But despite hiding behind cornflake displays or towers of oranges I'd soon enough feel the inevitable tap tap tap and perky greeting, Hello Shauna!

I'd do a feeble Spin and Grin. "Why helloooo!"

The questions were always the same. "So I hear you've finished your degree! What have you been up to?"

Oh plenty! I rise at noon to pull the blinds down so no one thinks I'm home, then I eat lots of ice cream and watch Days Of Our Lives. And then I curl up in a nest of rejection letters and cry great self-indulgent sobs, then it's naptime until Walker: Texas Ranger comes on.

"Oh, not much."

"So have you got a MAN yet?"

"Oh, not yet."

"Well dear, it will happen when you least expect it!" Sympathetic pat on the shoulder. "And same goes for your job situation, I'm sure!"

And then I'd wallow in self-pity and paranoia, thinking they'd rush home and tell their families, "That Shauna, she peaked way too early."

My fondest Woolies memory is the day Rhiannon abandoned Mum at the Chuck-Out Bin. She stalked her at a distance for about twenty minutes, waiting for the perfect moment. She tip-toed up behind as Mum examined a two-pack of garlic bread.

Tap tap tap. "HELLO SHARON!"

"Hellooooo!" The Mothership wheeled around, cheesy smile in place. Her face was thundercloud dark when she saw who it was. Rhiannon cackled and danced in the dairy aisle.