We were sailing on the sea of shops in London and spotted our albatross - How To Look Good Naked host Gok Wan sipping coffee in Cafe Nero.

I would have touched him for good luck but my hands were already full of shopping bags. Some silly stuff like Batman undies but also useful stuff like a non-brown dress to wear to a wedding in July. I argued with Rhiannon and Margaret that it made me look like a flower pot but caved in the end as it was half price and I couldn’t be arsed trying on more dresses.

I’m still useless with clothes. I spent all my teens and much of my twenties being very large and depressed in my uniform of jeans and billowing tops. As I got smaller I just kept buying the same thing in decreasing sizes. Then I spent much of last year writing a book in my pajamas. Now back in the real world, I always seem to look conservative and… brown. I’ve wasted so much of my youth - I want to have some fun with clothes before it’s time for rayon slacks and eau de mothball.

To kickstart this process, style muffins Rhiannon and Margaret kindly volunteered to come shopping. It was a very generous thing to do, given my tendency to give up if a garment gets more complicated than a drawstring waist. But there was just one minor hissyfit, when they made me try on a pair of patent stilettos. The salesladies kept hovering and asking WHY did I refuse the patent stilettos and I finally snapped, “BECAUSE THEY LOOK CHEAP AND SLUTTY”

“Woohoo!” Margaret crowed, “We made her break down! This is totally our Trinny and Susannah moment!”

It was a truly cracking day; one of those ones where you remember how good it is to be a lady and hang out with your fellow ladies. Thank you thank you thank you.

Rhi and Margaret cleverly pre-empted my usual shopping apathy by laying down these Rules first thing in the morning. Click the pic for a more readable version!

Recently Gareth and I were watching Local Hero, a great old Scottish movie. Well, 1983 isn't really old in the scheme of things, but the bad suits and telex machines were alarmingly quaint.

Anyway, there's a scene where the dude walks into the wee shop and asks for shampoo. The shopkeeper says, "Normal or Greasy?"

"Greasy?" I said, "Did you really call it Greasy over here?"

"Oh aye," said Gareth. His eyes became misty, recalling the distant days when he still needed shampoo. "Dry, Normal or Greasy."

"I see. It used to be Dry, Normal or Oily in Australia."

Married couple banter is so scintillating.

But seriously, whatever happened to Oily and Greasy shampoo? You just don't get that anymore. Somewhere along the line the marketeers decided that we were too delicate for such a direct and nasty label, so it was softened down to Frequent or Regular Use.

Personally I have wispy, pathetic locks so I look for words like Fine or Volume or Body. What else can you do, really, when there's ten dozen different brands with basically the same ingredients? I sift through the crowd looking for the most convincing copywriting, the most reassuring adjectives, the biggest ego boost. Hmm, this one claims bounce and shine but this one promises a just-out-of-the-salon feeling. What to do? WHAT TO DO!?

(Tangent: Dove and their Real Beauty Campaign. Yes, that's all very dandy to use Real Chicks in your advertising. I know you're trying to make me feel good about myself, Just The Way I Am. But somehow I'm even less inclined to buy your stuff because it's like you're that bitch in the playground at school who says nice things to me so I'll do her bidding. Like, you don't really think I'm pretty, do you? You're only saying it so I'll buy your goodies. Ha ha ha)

The other day I was shopping for groceries online and "browsing" the shampoo "aisle". It's impossible to do my usual label analysis because all you have is a fuzzy JPG of the bottle. So I randomly clicked on Garnier Fructis Body & Volume. It was only when it arrived the next day that I saw the soul-crushing subtitle, "FOR FLAT, LIFELESS HAIR".

Boycott! Boycott!

On the way to the train station yesterday I went by a posh clothing boutique and there was a mannequin in the window wearing a very lovely frock. Flattering-to-redheads green, flattering-to-dumpy-gal wrap style, and 50% off! But I was running late so I carried on.

I was meeting an excellent Internet Friend for the first time, and even though I have lost count of the number of excellent Internet Friends I have met in person over the past decade I still get ridiculously nervous every time. My teeth chatter and my face burns and I have to go wee about twenty-seven times. I was early so I fiddled with my hair and pretended to be casually texting Other Friends on my phone which is difficult with gloves on. Mfhuul grffc mgigu.

Anyway, my Internet Friend arrived and instantly she was as Excellent as I knew she'd be so I relaxed and we headed for a coffee shop. I was feeling quite cool and calm as I put down my bag and removed my hat and plucked off the gloves and unwound the scarf and finally... unbuttoned my coat.

"Oh, hey!" she said, "Your zip is undone."

Just. Bloody. Brilliant.

Really must stop getting dressed in the dark.

Later on I walked past Posh Boutique again with vague intentions of trying on the frock. Sure enough the mannequin was in the window, exactly as I'd left her; still wearing the lovely green dress with a strand of sparkly beads draped around her headless stump of a neck.

There was one difference, though. The flattering V-neckline now plunged considerably further than it had that morning. How do I put this? THE TITS WERE HANGING OUT OF THE DRESS.

Had someone asked to see the frock, then saleslady put it back in the window in a great hurry? Or had some bored husband made the adjustment while waiting for his missus to try on her 39th outfit? Either way, two white and shiny plastic boobs were beaming out at the street and entertaining all the passers-by.

Suddenly I lost all desire to try the dress on; after giving an eyeful of undies to someone I'd just met, it just looked too dangerous.

"Now whatever you do, don't pay full price," the Mothership lectured as we pulled into the Woolworths petrol station. "You have to haggle."

"But we're buying an electric frying pan!"

"So?"

"You can't haggle on a frying pan! We're going to Retravision, not a market in Thailand."

"Nonsense! Did you know, I got five dollars off my hair straighteners. And the new toaster."

"I'm not going to haggle."

"Oh come on, live dangerously." She switched off the engine. "Can you rummage in my handbag and find me a fuel voucher?"

In many respects, The Mothership was still the same old Mothership, generous provider of years of golden blog fodder.

• She still rakes through abandoned shopping trolleys looking for the discount fuel vouchers.

• She still drives like a maniac. But disappointingly, she didn't once ask me if it was okay for her to merge lanes in her unique way, "Can I blend? Can I blend?".

• She still has her bizarre taste in music. Some new titles on the rack: two copies of Katie Melua and an AC/DC live album. Katie Melua was born in Georgia, and who else was born in Georgia? Stalin, that's who. Now that says it all. Somebody please banish Katie Melua and her corkscrew curls and dreary little ballads to a distant gulag.
  

• She retains her unique combination of generosity and Buy-Bulk mentality. Every time Gareth so much as glanced at anything in a shop, she'd offer it to buy it for him. In triplicate. Once at Target, Gareth was pointing and laughing at a pair of revolting pyjamas with Victoria Bitter logos splashed all over them. The Mothership swooped at once. "Do you like these? Shall I get them for you? How bout two pairs? One to wear, one in the wash. And look, there's matching boxer shorts!"

  Another time I was showing her my new toasty polar fleece jacket, all the toastier for being 65% off at Kathmandu.

  "Wow! So why didn't you buy two?"
  "Because I've only got one body!"
  "But 65% off! Are you sure? We can go back! We've got time!"

Anyway, we went to Retravision to fetch an electric frying pan. Gareth had never seen one before he went to Australia and thought they were a brilliant invention. And I fell in love with them all over again, the way they heat up instantly, do exactly what you tell them - roast, simmer, fry, boil to oblivion - and remain non-stick and wipe-clean for years on end. Unlike our grotty bastard of an electric stove here in Scotland. It has just two settings: Flames o' Fire or Cold Indifference, with nothing in between. Even with the postage back to the UK, a good old Aussie frypan was still a bazillion times cheaper than buying a new oven. We had just settled on the gigantic Sunbeam model when the saleslady approached.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes," I smiled, "I'd like to buy this fry pan please."

"Sure, if you'll just come over to the till, I think that one is eighty dollars."

"Excellent."

Mum cleared her throat. "Is that your best price?"

The woman looked puzzled. "Erm. Yes?"

Gareth grinned while I pretended to be fascinated by the display of electric steamers.

"Would there be any discount for paying in cash?"

"Well... I'm pretty sure the price on the sticker is already our best price..."

"Would you mind checking?"

"I suppose I could go out the back and ask the manager?"

"That would be wonderful, thank you."

"Muuu-uum!"

"Well! It doesn't hurt to ask!"

Ten minutes later the lady returned from Out The Back. "The manager says we can't reduce the price, but I can give you this $10 fuel voucher for any Caltex Petrol Station."

"Excellent!" said The Mothership.

"Yeah brilliant," I muttered, "That'll be just enough fuel to get you to the Woolworths Petrol Station!"

So the lady still loves a bargain. Yet many things have changed since I first left Australia. She has developed an adventurous streak, and always seems to be going on a holiday or to a concert or taking a new class. She is energetic and fun and sparky. You could probably pinpoint it from the moment she hopped on the plane to visit us last year. It was almost like once she saw that Rhi and I were safe and happily living it up in Scotland without too many fire hazards, she just let go of old Mothership worries and focused on getting her own life. I'd never seen her so happy and settled. I had a lot of fun hanging out with her in Goulburn, and bawled on Gareth's shoulder when we said goodbye at the airport coz I knew I'd miss her more than ever.

And would you believe she even makes the tea now and then.

Ma, I am so proud of you and everything you have achieved. Love ya heaps.

I angsted over sunflower seeds in Holland and Barrett today. Do I get the Normal ones or the Organic? Can there really be a difference in such a tiny little seed? And the organic ones were £1.20 more expensive than the Normal ones. That's like $3 Australian! Does it really matter when I'm going to drown them with yogurt and blueberries anyway? What do I do? What do I do?

My mate had the same dilemma this week when buying some eggs. These two little old ladies were cluttering up the aisle and debating.

"You cannae get those eggs, hen! You've got tae get the organic!

"The organic! They're so expensive!"

"Aye but you've got tae think of the poor wee chickens! No one buys those other eggs anymore."

My friend likes to save a penny and he normally grabs the budget ones, but now he stood there in a bind. How could he get Morrisons Extra Val-U eggs after that? And think of the poor wee chickens. Fine then, little old ladies; you win! He plucked a free range box from the shelf.

"See!" hissed the old lady, "I told you!"

There's a great article in the Observer today about how we've all become neurotic and fearful about food. We're freaking out about fair trade, organics, trans fats and additives, but on the other hand we're slaves to the supermarket and eat more fast and processed food than ever. These days not even a wee wrinkly lady in Scotland can boil an egg without being tortured with guilt.

I finally grabbed the non-organic seeds and tried to ignore the niggling guilt for buying them at this faceless national conglomerate instead of the local independent health food store. And I really hate Holland and Barrett; they seem to have formed some sort of alliance with that withered crackpot, "Doctor" Gillian McKeith. For those outside of the UK, McKeith is the star of You Are What You Eat, a series in which she visits some of Britain's unhealthiest folks. She rifles through their cupboards, examines their stool samples, yells at them, then leaves them with a juice extractor and whole lot of wholegrains. Four weeks later she returns and they're wearing smaller pants and the glowing smiles of the converted. She has educated the nation and made a killing with her cookbooks and Living Food Love Bars.

Now every shelf in Holland & Barrett is plastered with signs with her gaunt little face endorsing various items. Gillian Sayz, Eat brazil nuts! They're full of selenium! Gillian Sayz, Buy These Aduki Beans! They'll make you regular or horny or something. Gillian Sayz, Eat Quinoa! If it's good enough for the Incas it's good enough for you, fatty!

I really resent that she endorses my sunflower seeds. I don't want people thinking I'm only buying them because I saw them on Channel 4, or because some woman whose personality was clearly flushed out in her last colonic told me so. I've been eating sunflower seeds for years, dammit! I feel like one of those righteous Radiohead fans who curse lowly losers like me who only got into them after OK Computer when they've liked Radiohead since Pablo Honey, AND NOT JUST THE 'CREEP' SINGLE, YOU LATECOMING SCUMBAG.

So, and this bit has nothing to do with the above, I lined up to buy my non-organic chain store trendy sunflower seeds behind a young mum with a blue-eyed baby in a pram. It gurgled and smiled at me and I smiled back in that uneasy way I smile at babies because I know they can sense my fear.

A little old lady lined up behind me with a carton of rice milk and some organic ginger biscuits. There will never be a shortage of little old ladies in Scotland. "He's a nice wee bairn," she said, "Isn't he?"

"Oh yes, he's quite cute."

"You see a wee face like that and you wonder how people can be so cruel to 'em." She clucked her tongue and shook her permed head.

"To who?"

"To bairns!"

"Umm... yes."

"And they ARE you know," she glared. "Cruel! Some people are very cruel to bairns. It's a real shame."

"Oh... aye."

Homesickness disguises itself in the most ridiculous forms. Today I had a pang of longing for catalogues. The ones that choke your mailbox on a Sunday morning - K Mart, Big W, Harvey Norman - all the big stores trying to woo you into their bargain lairs.

Growing up on a farm meant we had a P.O. Box instead a postman. So no catalogues! The Mothership would poach them from friends and we'd fight over them even if they were a month old. I'd spend hours gawking at all those crazy discounts; the weird prices like $5.49 or $9.87. There were horrid appliqued frocks, cordless drills, potted ferns and The World's Largest Cotton Undies.

I loved the models with their expressions permanently set to "delighted". Toddlers tottered across the page with their pudgy fists in the air. Women with sensible bobs grinned despite their elasticated skirts. The blokes, chisel-jawed and wavy-haired, all looked like the Gift Shop models on Sale of the Century. It was so unsettling to see them in polo shirts and khaki shorts, instead of besuited beside the BMW and Cash Jackpot.

The Retravision and Harvey Norman catalogues enthralled me with their gleaming whitegoods and small appliances. Multi-disc CD players were all the rage in the mid-90s, so each stereo had a little logo indicating its capacity. I'd frantically flip through the pages trying to find the beefiest machine. 3 discs! 5 discs! 10 discs! Sweeeet! It was no wonder I ended up with a 25-disc changer for my 21st birthday. Which is really the stupiest invention ever, for by the time you feed it you can never remember what you put in.

Best of all were the fridge and freezer pages. I would stare longingly at the carefully styled shelves, trying to pick my Dream Fridge based on its contents. I loved the rows of condiments and posh bottled water, the celery lounging in the crisper, the watermelon wedge smiling on a platter. And there were always elaborate parfaits in tall glasses. I wanted a fridge with parfaits, dammit. And a freezer full of Ski frozen yogurt. They always had Ski frozen yogurt! We had half a cow and Home Brand Choc-Coated Ice Creams in our freezer. Meanwhile in the fridge, vegetables turned to liquid alongside the brown orange juice and last year's salad dressing. I daydreamed that somewhere out there, these pristine perfumed devices really existed.

You just don't get catalogues like in the UK. I'll be home in three months, would someone save a few for me?

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."

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?

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.

Without Rhiannon in the house it's become painfully aware that I have nothing in common with my roomies. Especially not Morph who gave me a Christmas card that said, Santa isn't real, but Jesus is!

There's suddenly a vast expanse of time in the evening that I used to spend ranting and raving to Rhi about the latest pile of unwashed dishes or Mysterious Pubic Hair, because a pube shared is pube halved. But now we speak on the phone a few times a week and I'm reminded how alarming fast things are changing at the moment, our lives branching off in all sorts of crazy directions.

I'm getting the hang of Solo Shopping. If I plan ahead and put my debit card in my coat pocket I can whip it out quickly, avoiding purse-rummaging and cashier eye-rolling. It occurred to me tonight when I noticed that I'd once again filled the trolley with yogurt and ingredients for vegie chilli, that I could get even more efficient with the grocery shop if I just bought the same thing every week. Then I could just cook the same thing every week. I could live off the motherload of chilli for days on end! And with well-timed dashes to the microwave, I'd be able to avoid getting trapped in dreary kitchen conversations.

Tonight's shop was slowed down a little by the Rhiannon Memorial Coat. She didn't want it anymore so I snaffled it, even thought it's a size too small, particularly snug in the arms. It's white with a fluffy collar, so imagine a furry, partially immobile marshmellow. It's very warm though, and as long as I have a good approach it's not overly hard for me to sit down while wearing it. I didn't take it off while shopping, coz then I'd have to waste time wrestling back into it. So I just had to make sure not to buy anything on a high shelf.

As I was shuffling out with my shopping I passed a harrassed looking mother with two little boys. One of them had just learned a new word and was determined to say it as much as possible even though he didn't know what it meant.

"You've got SEX!" he cackled to his brother. "SEX!"

He tugged his mothers hand, "You've got SEX!". He said it gleefully like it was a terrible disease.

He stopped right in front and peered up at me, "YOU'VE got SEX!"

"Ha! Fat chance in this coat."

On the bus home a bunch of students got on at the university campus, looking very young and serious. Why do university students look so serious? I guess it's so you use up all your seriousness quota then, so in later years when you wind up doing apparently serious things like getting married, all you're able to do is laugh hysterically.

My ponderings were interrupted when the bus driver suddenly slammed on the brakes, sending one of my shopping bags flying off the seat. I was powerless to stop it, bereft of movable arms in the Rhiannon Memorial Coat. A pot of yogurt landed SPLAT in the middle of the aisle and exploded everywhere.

"WHOA!" I said very loudly, just like Keanu Reeves.

The students all stared at me as I slowly slid off my seat and tried to manoeuver myself low enough to pick up the pot with robot arms. What possessed me to say WHOA? Was it to convince these kids I was just as cool as them? What would their generation know about Keanu anyway? As I kneeled in the aisle and swatted at the mess with tissues, I couldn't move my hand quick enough to stop the word popping out again, "WHOA!".

It's time to start buying groceries online.

Edinburgh is sometimes known as The Windy City, this website told me so. I also discovered this while ploughing my way to work today. It wasn't a day to be wearing a kilt. Not that I was wearing a kilt, but I was thinking, if only some hunky Scotsman happened along just now, wearing a kilt.

This wind was more powerful than velcro. It rrrrrripped open the velcro flap on my bag and threatened to steal my lunch. I always thought velcro was an all-powerful substance. I remember in the 80s when all the kids in my class had velcro sneakers. Thick, sticky fingers wrapped around their foot like a claw -- it seemed to me the greatest innovation since the Old El Paso Taco Kit. And truth be told, I'd always struggled with shoelace-tying. I begged The Mothership for velcro shoes, but she deemed them "sheer bloody laziness".

Tonight the breeze propelled us into Tesco, up and down the aisles, and all the way to the dimwit at the checkout. No matter how carefully Rhi and I choose our Checkout Dudes, we always wind up with the most stoned kid in the shop. We had never witnessed such excruciatingly slow scanning of groceries. He stared up at the ceiling and groped absently at the conveyor belt. It look five minutes to scan five little yogurt pots. He lifted a lettuce, peered at it for a long moment, then let it drift across the scanner. His mind was in the clouds but the body thought it was still in the thick of the gale.

I was filled with an irrational rage. After polite coughing and foot-tapping proved fruitless, I resorted to snatching each item from his hand mid-air and stuff it into the shopping bag.

SHAUNA: Take it up a gear, buddy!

CHECKOUT DUDE: You got a Tesco Club Card?

S: I got a bus to catch.

CD: Mmm.

RHI: They let them sit down, that's where they go wrong. There's no chairs for checkout kids where I come from. I'm going to round up every space cadet Tesco employee in Britain and take them to WOOLWORTHS BOOT CAMP back in Australia and show them how it's done! Speed! Precision! Chop chop!

CHECKOUT DUDE: Are you collecting coupons for the school kids?

S: I don't give a shit about the school kids!

We almost missed the bus, but luckily the breeze was at our backs.

I caught the Orgasmatron to work today. The #12 route is served by only the oldest, noisiest, rattling heap of shit buses. The brakes wheeze and the windows shudder, the seats are cracked and creaky. But after awhile you discover the mechanical shortcomings of these vehicles can lead to a most exquisite side-effect. Especially when one sits on the lower deck during peak-hour, ideally on a Friday afternoon when the bus has to wait at traffic lights for long periods, rumble rumble rumbling. Soon enough you're praying for a three car pile-up so you'll be stuck at this spot for just a little... bit... longer!

But no time for cheap thrills today, this was Friday morning and I was running late. I sat upstairs and squinted into shop windows as the bus inched along. There's squillions of charity shops in Edinburgh, and they all seem to have a copy of Naomi Campbell's Swan on their bookstands.

I worry about the little shops. I look at the dinky hairdresser with photos of Duran Duran-esque hairdos on the wall and wonder just who's going get their hair cut there? And the empty fishmonger, what's going happen to all that unsold fish? Does anyone ever go into that tiny cafe? I've kept a concerned eye on a little gift shop for the past six months. I've never seen a single customer in that whole time. What will become of the gift shop guy? Even if we could get one person to buy one card per hour, how's he going to live off that?

Sometimes you see people preparing to open a new business. They're proud and optimistic as they watch a dude on a ladder paint the shop name above the window. I fret about how much money they've sunk into this, if they'll get any customers. It's depressing near my house -- first the ice cream place closed down, then the framing shop, the scooter shop and now the shoe shop that only opened six months ago. If the bagpipe shop goes next I will cry!

The #12 wobbled to a halt near a funeral parlour. Dozens of squealing school kids piled on. I watched a lady swatting a display of headstones with a feather duster. She looked around the shop and checked her watch, then she must have sighed heavily because her bangs drifted up and down. She came to the front of the shop and leaned against the door frame, lips pursed tightly.

Imagine having your livelihood dependent on someone elses deadlihood. She looked so anxious, twirling the duster in her hands, waiting for someone to kick the bucket. It wasn't exactly the biggest or fanciest funeral joint I'd seen, I hope she made enough to get by.

I considered getting up and shoving one of the kiddies down the stairs to boost her profits, but I was just getting comfy in my seat.

When Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly was having a bad day, she went to Tiffanys to calm her down. I go to Marks & Spencer Simply Food.

Instead of a croissant and a Givenchy gown, I belch over a can of Fanta in ill-fitting trackpants, but it has the same soothing effect. Shopping in Princes Street always fills me with an irrational rage. The baffling multi-level shops, the dawdling tourists stopping every five metres to take another photo of Edinburgh Castle, the old folk and prams and beggars cluttering up the pavement like abandoned cars; all conspiring to piss me off.

So I take refuge in M&S. For those unfamiliar with Simply Food, they describe it as a "meals solution store for busy people". They have all manner of ready meals and pre-packaged products so you can pay maximum price for the minimal effort dinner. There's something so relaxing about being there, bathed in fluorescent light, watching wee old ladies select their individual Steak & Kidney pies and singletons frowning at nutrition information panels.

M&S are truly the masters of the ready-meal universe. While their meals are of superior quality to your Iceland Chili Con Carne, they're still trying to flog pre-packaged processed preservative-laden stuff. But they make you want it bad by giving their products the most beautifully overblown names and descriptions. I spend ages wandering up and down the aisles, dreamy and content, just reading the labels. They plump up nouns and roll them in succulent verbs so skillfully that they could make a plate of gravel sound like Michelin-star dining.

Witness how they sex up a humble BLT: Combining the spirit of America and Italy; maple cured bacon with gorgonzola cheese dressing, sliced tomatoes, lettuce leaves, mayonnaise and red onions on pumpkin seed bread.

Let's wash that down with some lemon cordial, your basic nasty cocktail of glucose and E numbers. But no! M&S call it Mediterranean Lemon and Mexican Lime High Juice. Now that's what I call fusion cookin'.

You could spend an hour looking at the yogurts alone. How to decide? The Greek-Style English Strawberry and Cornish Clotted Cream Yogurt made with Channel Island Milk? Or the Champagne Rhubarb and Madagascan Vanilla? I swear I'm not making that up.

(But how I wish I could. Where does one apply to become a copywriter for M&S?)

The produce section drives me wild, because it's really just like any other produce section, but they make me question my fundamental beliefs about fruit. When is an orange not an orange? I stood there one afternoon, frowning at the orange cupped in my hand, thinking it must surely be worth 70p and taste better than every other orange that had previously passed my lips because it had been Bathed In The Florida Sun.

I'm sure we're all being watched. There must be men in white coats behind a two-way mirror, watching the shoppers and making frantic notes. Can the shoppers resist the Irresistable Choc Caramel Mini Bites Oozing With Buttercream? Are they unwrapping the Hoisin Duck wraps with their eyes? Is anyone getting a boner over the Boneless Pork Loin Joints Decorated With Bramley Apple Puree?

Then perhaps the Head of Marketing barges in and screams, "We're not shifting the Scottish Cod Loin Fillets! Not good enough! I want the aisles puddled with drool! I want to get out the DANGER WET FLOOR signs!". The hapless copywriters are handed a thesaurus and a stack of Barbara Cartland novels then chained to their desks until they come up with something sexier.

Meanwhile, back in the shop, after half an hour of label-reading you tend to get whipped up into quite a state. The mind swirls with bloated adjectives and tantalising verbs and your fingers ache to open your wallet. Must buy something, something... but what?

A few months back I found the mother of all magniloquent products: a cereal called Deliciously Nutty Crunch:

Go nuts! A sumptuously sweet blend of delicious toffee-flavoured crunch with almonds, brazils and tasty pecans!

So I spent the equivalent of AU $10 on Deliciously Nutty Crunch, a cereal so lacking in nutritional value I'd be better off eating a tub of lard. But what fun to eat something so ridiculously titled. Remind me to put that on my epitaph:

Some time ago, UK supermarkets and other food retailers recognised that not all Brits were content to live on chips and lager alone. To cater to this sliver of society, they each introduced a house brand of healthier options. Now discerning customers can buy their favourite foods from their most trusted brands, safe in the knowledge that evil fats have been replaced by friendly sugars, artificial flavourings or ground cockroaches. And to make these product ranges even more appealing, they gave them wacky names...

ASDA ‘Good For You!’
It’s the exclamation mark that puts the delightfully sneering tone into this brand. Imagine your neighbour has just leaned over the fence to tell you he won £10 million in the Lotto. Of course you will spit right back, “Well, good for YOU!”

Safeway ‘Eat Smart’
The alternative is to Eat Stupid and pour lard on your cornflakes.

Boots ‘Shapers’
Dear Boots,
I am writing in regards to your ‘Shapers’ range of products. To me the word ‘Shapers’ suggests transformation or sculpting, like control-top pantyhose, corsets or mumsy foundation garments. With this definition in mind, I recently purchased one of your pre-packaged Shapers sandwiches. When I applied said sandwich to my thunderous thighs, I noticed no real difference in their shape, apart from a slight thickening due to congealed mayonnaise. Could you kindly refund me the £2.19 and deduct 2.19 points from my Boots Advantage Card?

Sainsbury's ‘Be Good To Yourself’
‘ ... Go Buy A Vibrator’.

Tesco ‘Healthy Living’
If they can’t be arsed to give it a more imaginative name, then I can’t be arsed to buy it.

Marks & Spencer ‘Count On Us’
Dear Mr. Marks & Mr. Spencer,
I have been an enthusiastic consumer of your Count On Us range of products, including the Voluptous Vanilla Iced Dessert and the Rancher's Chicken Flatbread. After awhile, one comes to think of Count On Us as a name one can trust. However, recently I found myself having a very bad day indeed; I missed the bus and my boss yelled at me. I was disheartened to discover that I could not count on Count On Us in my time of need. Why didn’t the Chargrilled Vegetable Pizza call me a taxi so I wasn’t late? Why didn't a gang of Thai Curry Flavour Curls come round and beat up my boss? If you are going to name your products so boldly, there needs to be some sort of warning label on the packet, Not Suitable For Those With Co-Dependent Tendencies. Otherwise I suggest you rename it to something like We Won’t Be There For You At All.

I bought a pedometer yesterday. It is a very clever device - it tells you how many steps you've taken, how many kilometres you've roamed, how many calories you've burned and how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man.

People have told me pedometers are highly inaccurate, but I say pfft to that. I care not for precision instruments. I just wanted to try and beat the number of steps that I did the day before. Exercise is no fun unless there's some sort of petty challenge involved.

So clipped the contraption to my skirt and strolled out of the Sportsman's Warehouse thinking I was Ms Sportypants. I adopted a jaunty John Travolta Stayin' Alive kind of stride that I figured would definitely register on the pedometer. Oh yes. I felt so cool and so healthy and so convinced that by the time we departed in six weeks, I would be morphed into the foxiest thing Scotland has ever seen.

Then POW! Right outside the Canberra Centre in a crowded lunchtime, the heel of my left shoe snapped off. My ankled wobbled wildly and I said, "Ooof!". I staggered across the tiles in ungraceful fashion, handbag swinging as I swore.

The next hour was spent sulking and stomping around the shops in search of a replacement for shoes I bought barely three months ago. It's hard enough trying to find dainty summer footwear for a size 10 hoof as it is, let alone when the Christmas sales are over and the winter stock is coming in. After five different salespeople in four different stores rolled their eyes at my predicament, a young gentleman finally shoved my feet into a pair of size 9 mules and declared it a perfect fit. Such a Cinderella moment.

But as soon as I clopped my way back to the office, I realised these boots weren't made for walking. So I switched back to the broken shoes and went back to the shoe store and whined until they gave me a refund.

I was still shoeless, but all that mucking about added up to 3500 steps. Woohoo!

Bucketloads of beautiful rain on New Years Morning, what else is there to do but to lay in bed listening to the earth suck it up. Except the woman across the courtyard keeps interrupting with her brand new turbo-charged juicing machine. The wet silence is shattered with a nasty, rattling rrrrr! rrrrr! as she sends each hapless fruit and vegetable to its gruesome death.

It's a cruel way to go. If I was a carrot or half an orange, I would have looked at the juicing machine and thought, "Well, this looks like fun." Have you seen the latest in these contraptions? They are huge with all manner of shiny surfaces, interesting curves and hollows sticking out everywhere. It looks like a waterslide complex at the local pool.

So these sticks of celery are lining up, picking their Speedos out of their arse cracks, thinking this is going to be the ride of their life, thinking they are going to slide down that tunnel screaming "wheeeeeeeee!". But instead the only screams are those of pain as they're flung into the Blades O' Death, violently ground up with watermelon or wheatgrass then spat out the other end into a glass of tasteless muck. Poor bastards.

We took my grandmother out so she could have a break from the hospital. She got a few things at Woolies. We were walking along Anson Street when Mum said, "Keep your eyes peeled for fuel vouchers!"

"What?"

"You know, 2 cents a litre off at the Woolworths petrol station. Help me look."

If you spend $50 or more at Woolworths, they give you a voucher that entitles you to a teeny tiny petrol discount. My mother and grandmother save them obsessively. When they meet up it's like baseball cards. "I'll trade you three 2 cents a litre off for your expired 4 cents a litre. I don't think they really check the dates..."

You may recall that these dames love a bargain. So we should not have been mortified when they started pacing the street, plucking stray receipts from the pavement.

"Put that down, mother. You don't know where it's been."

"The other day I found about half a dozen on the way to the car, some people just toss them away without a care!"

"Mother! Get out of the gutter!"

"Just a minute! I've hit the jackpot here."

"Girls, there is nothing wrong with your mother wanting to save a penny!" declared my grandmother, plucking a docket from a rose bush.

Rhiannon watched them with exasperated expression, leaning against the car with her arms folded. "Do I share genes with these people? Where did I get my class from, I ask you? My sense of dignity?"

Mum and Nanny were crouched on the pavement beside the Trolley Return. There were fifty shopping trolleys nestled like rusty sardines, and they'd spotted two abandoned receipts right in the middle of it. They dug through their handbags for suitable implements to rescue them.

"Oooh. Nearly got the bugger."

"Muuuum," I whined. "They all expire on the 11th of October. Do you really think you're going to fill your car eight times in the next two weeks?"

She ignored me, brushing dirt of her precious finds and clucking happily.

"They're like fucking squirrels, that's what!" snorted my sister. "Bouncing around and digging through the trash with their arses in the air. Bloody squirrels."

The flying tomato sauce was the last straw. For six months we've been trudging to the supermarket each week and trying to buy the lightest goods possible, because lugging them up three flights of stairs has proven to be a trial. We always seem to leave the shopping til the arse end of the weekend when there's only the slightest sliver of energy left in our bones. We've tried doing a few short trips, we've tried resting between flights, we've tried stuffing our backpacks with the food then slowly staggering up like an Everest expedition.

The fact is, we're just really bloody lazy. Last week we were on the top flight and I was shuffling along behind my sister. A bottle of La Gina Tomato Sauce with Basil suddenly fell out of her bag. It slowly rattled along the tiles and I watched it, mesmerised.

"Are you going to pick that up?" she asked after what felt like an hour, but was probably half a second.

"Whaaa?" I had shopping bags threaded up my forearms, it didn't occur to me to put them down.

Next thing you know the bottle rolled off the edge. I expected to hear that falling noise like on the cartoons. Three storeys, it fell. We heard it shatter and the air smelled all fruity.

"Oh, shit."

It looked like someone had been murdered down there. Someone with basil scented blood. It was all over the floor, smeared down the wall.

This week we decided to try something different: Woolworths HomeShop. It was so easy! We wandered down the virtual aisle, a click here, a click there. The delivery was scheduled for Monday night and we were ridiculously excited. We even cleaned up the kitchen so the delivery guy wouldn't think we were slobs.

At 8pm, the buzzer rang.

"G'day? It's John from Woolworths!"

"Oh great, come on up!"

"Up? What floor?"

"The top one!"

"That'd be fucking right!"

He sounded crazy. But we opened the door anyway. We saw three crates of groceries and a pair of scrawny legs poking out from beneath them.

"I am getting too bloody old for this shit!" said the crates on legs.

He trudged inside and dumped the goods on the bench, revealing a shaved head and shady teeth. He didn't draw breath once for the next five minutes as he unceremoniously unpacked the goods. Rhiannon and I just stood there, wide-eyed, as he rambled and bounced around.

"Here we are ladies! How are you this evening? Bit frickin cold tonight eh? I see why you get HomeShop, those stairs are a bitch! Oh it's your first time? Right. I better tell you a few things. First I'll need your card, swipe it here. Cheque Savings or Credit? Savings eh? I used to have a Savings Account but I traded it in for a wife and kids and a mortgage. I shoulda invested in a garage full of fuckin Harleys, would have been better resale value I tell ya.

"Anyway, what ya got here. Jeeeeeesus, you two are so bloody healthy! Look at all these goddamn vegetables! Where's the chocolate? Where's the chips? Y'don't even have a packet of Tim Tams? What's wrong with ya? Anyway, just watch out, Woolies are the sneakiest bastards in the world, they'll get the HomeShop stuff from the shittiest stock ou the back, the stuff they woulda thrown out otherwise. And as for your milk. You buy milk at the supermarket and what's the first thing ya do? Y' check the use by date, that's what! But most HomeShop people are stupid and they just throw the goods straight in the fridge without checking and the next day they have a big swig of putrid milk. No really it's true. So don't be that fucking stupid alright?

"Awww shit, they told me I gotta watch me language. I'm sorry if I'm offendin ya. Actually no I'm not sorry, I've been talkin like this for forty years and I ain't changing for no prick.

"Well that's about it. But I gotta tell ya girls, I won't be climbing up these fucking stairs for much longer, do y' know why? We're not delivering to apartments like these anymore. Some delivery guy got the shit kicked out of him in Sydney so Woolies have said, no more apartments, which means you have to meet me at the front and lug it all up the stairs yourself, which sorta defeats the purpose but at least you don't have to go to the fucking supermarket with all those screaming babies, wah wah wah. I mean, you two don't look like you'd hurt me, but you never know. You could be terrorists! I would never have thought Bin Laden was a terrorist just to look at him. People are full of surprises.

"Anyway, catch ya later. And remember girls, ground floor apartments are the way to go, orright?"

The pie apples and Sirena tuna were missing and the snow peas were shit. But overall, it was a memorable experience.

Just a quick trip into the supermarket for orange juice, that's all. I'm standing in the aisle debating the merits of pulp-free versus pulp-clogged when a sweet, cheery voice floats over the speakers.

I thought love was only true in fairy tales...

I choose some juice and know I really should head straight for the checkout, but it's such a lovely tune.

Love was out to get me
That's the way it seemed...

Only Neil Diamond could pen a song so jaunty. And it's the Monkees singing it, not that recent inferior cover version. And I'm a dork so I know all the words. So I swagger down another aisle and sing. I feel like Elvis in a dodgy musical, where he's walking down a beach and hawaiian-shirted back-up singers suddenly appear from behind sand dunes, armed with ukuleles.

There's a short rolly lady and her pricing gun is loaded with REDUCED stickers. She's grinning as she attacks some blocks of cheese, because she's a dork and knows all the words too!

Disappointment haunted all my dreams.

I look around and notice that the other shoppers seem to be enjoying the song too. There's a few absent smiles and drumming of fingers on shopping trolleys, we're all gearing up for the big chorus.

Old grey banana-groping guy in the produce section: Then I saw her face!

Rather handsome lad selecting tomatoes: Now I'm a believer!

Everyone's right into it. It was magic. Except for the babies and grotty toddlers, they're too stupid to know a good tune. The Wiggles, pah!

I'm in love...

The checkout chick with violent red lips (scanning large box of Rice Bubbles) harmonises with the Eagled-Eyed Customer (making sure she gets the Bubbles at the sale price, dammit):

Ooooooooooooooooooohhhhh...

It's interesting to watch other people to see if they fancy themselves as a lead singer or if they wait for a harmony or just pipe up occassionally in the background; whether they audibly sing or just move their lips; whether they scrunch up their forehead with feeling or nod their head.

Miss Permed and Peroxided in queue reading Who Weekly and discreetly picking undies out of arse: I'm a believer, I couldn't leave her if I tried.

Baldy man with air guitar action: Durn da durn durn durrrrn!

I wander down the baking aisle during the second verse, humming and wondering if there's anything else I need to buy. I pick up a box of Green's 97% Fat Free Chocolate Mud Cake Mix. I think that a 97% Fat Free Cake couldn't contain enough mud to be tasty, would be more like dirty water really. But I want it anyway.

Soon we've belted out the second chorus and it all goes crazy. I am swearing and shoving my ageing credit card in and out of the machine in time with the fade out, thinking vaguely that I'd have had enough cash if I'd stopped at the juice, but now I needed Mr Visa for all this unnecessary shit I'd accumulated.

The next song is an Eagles chestnut and somewhere there is a crack team of behavioural marketing gurus watching us on surveillance tapes and cackling with glee.

Just one of those days when odd little things happen to make you laugh.

First I went to the Asian grocer to get some Pocky, and lo and behold they have a new line called FRAN! Fran are much like pocky except more curvy and chocolatey. I had to buy a box and take a photo just to show the real live Fran.

Then we toddled out of the supermarket with our groceries to find something bizarre. Two easter eggs were sitting side by side on the bonnet of my car. They were Humpty Dumpty ones with chocolate beans inside. Easter eggs in November? Was it a gift from a kind stranger? Chocolate anthrax? Either way it was bloody weird.

Finally on the way home we saw a shopping trolley (cart, for you bloody americans) perched on top of a stop sign.

Hmmm.

We had chocolate, rice, orange juice, pastrami and soap. The guy behind us had a box of Home Brand Choc Chip Museli bars, one of those Tuna Lunch Kit things with crackers and tuna and mayonnaise, and a can of Campbell's Chunky Soup.

"Well, he'd never get anywhere with me," declared my sister.

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's got no taste, he's cheap, and he can't cook."

Watch your trolleys, boys. You're being analysed :)

After 37 minutes of muzak...

"Welcome to to Telstra's Customer Service Line!"

"Hooray!"

"We are now trialling our new service where you can make your choices simply by saying the keywords! There's no need to press buttons on your keypad! Thanks to our new voice technology, you can now simply SAY what you want to do!"

"Wot?"

"Now! Please tell me what you'd like! Accounts and Payments! Connections and Disconnections! Special Offers! Faults!"

"Oh man. What is this shit?"

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! Please select again from the following menu!"

"I've already heard the bloody menu!"

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! Please select again from the following menu!"

"Arrrgh!"

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! Please select again from the following menu!"

"CONNECTIONS!"

"You have selected Connections and Disconnections!"

"HURRAH!"

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! If you need help please say HELP!"

"I don't need help! I just want to disconnect my phone!"

"Would you like me to repeat the menu!"

"Your voice is far too perky for my liking!"

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! If you need help please say HELP!"

"Kill me!"

This wee pup wandered into the newsagent today, all lost and sad looking, coughing and coughing as he wandered up and down the rows of magazines. Doesn't look like he was too thrilled by the selections on offer.

You'd think the Getting Caught At Zeffirelli's In Your PJ's episode would have deterred my sister from taking her slumberwear out in public, but not so. We had a hankering for a hot fudge sundae from McDonalds, evil stuff but chocolately and delicious. But alas, in today's cashless society, we had a mere 45 cents between us, 10 of which I'd found in Harry's kennel, of all places. A trip to the ATM was in order.

"I'll drive and you run to the teller," I gallantly offered.

"But I'm in my slippers!"

"It's after nine! Noone will be around!"

Noone was around, unless you count a couple of ambulances and a small crowd of nosy onlookers. Lights flashed madly blue and red as someone was loaded onto a stretcher. Security guards from Supabarn mumbled into their radios and tried to look important.

"Oh for christ's sake!" hissed my sister.

"I should have bought my camera!"

"I'm in my slippers again!"

"We can wait til they leave. But how badly do you want that sundae?"

Next thing she's dashing past the drama, all lightness and grace in her lambswool coated tootsies.

"It's an old lady! She's okay! But she had a heart attack in the supermarket!" my sister reported breathlessly a few moments later. "Wonder what brought that on?"

"She just couldn't believe the price of the bananas."

My new phrase of choice is "holy crap on a stick", and that is what I yelled just now as I slammed down the phone. To hell with the dirty looks from co-workers. You'll be happy to know my existential crisis is over, I bet you didn't even notice I'd had one, so now I am back to my usual brand of silly low brow blogging on groundbreaking issues such as the one i am about to address now: HAIRDRESSERS.

I wrote about Andrew about a month ago, but deleted the post after a mini-crisis in which I panicked, thinking my rantings about his adorably camp stylings, Jennifer Lopez jokes, and how he transformed me from shaggy red dog to blonde-streaked goddess, would have made you all think I'm very shallow and self-absorbed and prone to stereotyping homosexuals. But I am over that crisis now, and have come to terms with my lack of depth.

Anyway, it was only by chance that Andrew came to cut my strawberry locks, and it was two hours of magic that I'll never forget. Ever since I have positively glowed, I've felt hot and sassy, every day I've felt like one of those chicks on the shampoo ads (I call them Pantene Bitches), I was showered with compliments, even from the stickfigure receptionists at the gym (I call them Gym Bitches) and asked constantly, Darling! Who does your hair?

Today I was daydreaming idly of our next tryst when the phone rang. It was one of the blonde twits from the salon (Salon Bitches) telling me that Andrew had left and would I like to change my appointment to another stylist?

"Andrew has left? Andrew has left? He can't leave! Why did he leave? Why didn't he tell me?"

"It just wasn't working out for him," cooed Salon Bitch. "I don't think he felt comfortable here."

Comfortable my ass! I'm sure the transition from chopping Keanu's raven locks on The Matrix 2 set to surburban Canberra salon was a bit of a come down, but sweet lord! Didn't I mean anything to him? How could he be so cold!

"Did he say where he was going?"

"He isn't going to another salon. He's not doing anything."

Pah! Pah, I say. As if they'd tell me where he'd gone and risk losing my custom.

"So do you want to keep your appointment? We have plenty of other stylists"

"I don't want to talk about it right now. Just leave me alone!" I may or may not have tearfully said. "I'll get back to you on that one."

I feel so used. Empty. Unkempt. Dirty, and not in the good way. What am I supposed to do now? Where do I go? How the hell do you find a decent hairdresser in Canberra? Does anyone out there actually live in Canberra? Do you have hair? Tell me where I should go, before I end up with a Narelle or a Kylie or a Sharon hacking away at my locks in a suburban hell hole with pink vinyl seats and blue rinses. I have to be a Pantene Bitch again.

"The back brakes are shot, I mean really, it's a wonder you're not dead. And the rear shocks are completely stuffed. You'll probably get another 10,000 k's from the front brakes if you're lucky. Your two front tyres are kaput, they'll need replacing. If I use reconditioned parts, then add labour, plus 10% for GST, you're looking at about $2,200..."

Just the words I wanted to hear this morning at the garage. Golden Boy™ has been declared "stuffed". Hurrah. After a brief period of hyperventilation, I did what any motor-savvy intelligent independent woman would do – call her father. "Jesus fucking christ Daaaaaad! I don't have two thousand dollars! I wouldn't even get two thousand dollars if I sold the car! I only asked for a service and look what's happened!"

Granted, I hadn't had it serviced since September, and I'd been ignoring that faint crunching sound coming from the rear for a week or two, but I didn't think I could have inflicted that much damage on a car that was in brilliant condition when I bought it just on a year ago. Dad told me that the mechanic must be "a shonky fuckwit" and asked me to put him on. Much grunty blokey talk followed and finally they agreed to just replace the brake pads for now and Dad (a former mechanic) would check out the rest him to ensure I wouldn't be swindled into getting unnecessary work done.

(As a kid I used to ponder the question, what would be the most convenient occupation for ones parents to have? Aside from Completely Rich Bastard, of course. I used to envy kids who's folks ran corner shops, coz they'd get free icecreams and lollies all the time. Or the kid who's dad ran the local pool, coz you could swim for free all the time, you could do bombs and run on the concrete and never get in trouble. Plus free icecreams and lollies.Anyway, people used to say I was lucky to have a teacher mum, coz she could do my homework for me, which of course she never did, she wouldn't even help us if we asked her how to spell something, "I didn't spend $50 on that Macquarie for it to gather dust! Look it up!". I'm now convinced that having a mechanic for a father is really quite nice, he's saved me from being ripped off about a dozen times, he's patched the car up on the sly when I crashed it so mum wouldn't have to find out. Etcetera)

$400 later my car is serviced and the brakes patched up. Still got to fork out for two new tyres. Needless to say my Get The Fuck Outta Dodge fund is non-existent now. And of course all this happens at the same time the electricity, home contents, and three phone bills arrive, not to mention physio fees. Being an adult SUCKS, I tells ya. I long to be 16 again, earning $4.65 an hour at KFC and having no bills and my biggest responsibility was remembering to feed Lenin, my goldfish. I hate maturity! I hate responsibility! I hate being in debt! I hate having a car!

AAAAARGH! AAAAAARGH!

Okay, that was fun.

Meanwhile, it's been pouring rain here for four days straight. Our backyard is looking very third-world-slum-after-a-flood-ish. Harry, illustrated below, is absolutely filthy. His arse is brown from sitting in the mud, his fur is clumped together with chunks of dirt and leaves, he's been moaning and whimpering for twenty-four hours straight. But please, no sympathy for the little bugger. He has a perfectly dry kennel with cosy blankets that I forked out $110 for, and he stubbornly refuses to go near it.

I'm not entirely mean though. I set off to Supabarn just now to buy him some posho dog food, to try and ease the pain that comes from being perpetually soaked. I eventually went with that old chesnut, My Dog - Beef Strips In Sauce With Spring Vegetables, but noticed they're stocking some new varities. And damn dodgy looking ones, which is saying something since it's dog "food" we're talking here.

As endorsed by some cartoon down with a crown.

Bounce! Now with 50% more bounce in every can. What is the "bounce" in Bounce, anyway? Amphetamines? Pig trotters?

Chappi. Hehe. Chappi.

I hope someone else finds those amusing. Please say it's not just me. I might go back to Supabarn and stake out the display and see if anyone else laughs.

Every day at around 3PM the same big white truck rumbles down Northbourne Avenue beneath my window. It's a Target truck, carrying lots of lurid polyester and dodgy soft furnishings, I'd imagine. It has that annoying big red target symbol on it, except this one is a variation on the theme, it's a big smiley face and there's huge text screaming down the length of the truck: TARGET. WE'RE NOT HAPPY UNLESS YOU ARE.

Without fail, every 3PM-ish, it whizzes by (I tried to take a photo of it but it turned out a blur, much like my portrait of Alex Popov). I have theories about this recurring truck. Remember in The Truman Show, when Truman notices that the scenery is looping behind him? Perhaps I am living on a giant sound stage! Now wouldn't you tune in to The Shauny Show? Perhaps you are already? I just flashed my boobs at you, did you enjoy that?

Or perhaps Target is in cahoots with my company, and they drive that truck past my window just to remind me to be happy and work hard like a good little prole. Well okay, I'll be happy. Because as the truck has pointed out to me, unless I'm happy, a multi-national retail chain won't be happy. In turn the shareholders will be displeased, the management will become disgruntled, then the checkout chick with the greasy hair and attitude with be churlish, and eventually the innocent little customer will be unhappy, and that big red target symbol on the truck will turn into a frown.

So I'll smile today. I couldn't bear the guilt of triggering all that unhappiness.

Does anyone else get all flustered at the supermarket? It's always so daunting. We go to Woolies at Dickson, and it's always packed, no matter what time or day you go there. I hate crowds. I hate trolleys clashing and screaming children and slow geezers with those wheelie things. Back in my hometown there was always an empty aisle where you could get a good run-up with your trolley then jump on it, and fly your way down to the checkout. No such fun here. It's all pressure, pressure, pressure.

There's always two dozen people waiting at the deli. I stand there with my ticket, I'm usually about 87 and they're up to 12. I always feel nervous and pressured when my number's about to come up. Last night I was only 19 (God help me) and by the early teens I started pacing and rehearsing my order over and over in my head because I just know I will stuff it up and trip over my tongue and go all red-faced and hold up the line and everyone will glare at me.

I like to marvel at the ugliness of some of the meats they have there. Last night I stared down a piece of brawn. Have encountered brawn? It's pink and sickly with thumbnail-sized chunks of fat in it. I wonder what kind or hybrid of animal(s) could possibly bring forth such an attrocity, and who the hell would ever buy it. I nearly missed my turn coz I was so shocked when number 18 bought half a kilo of it.

I love the beauty aisle. So many silly things that you don't need but you think you must at the time. There's a different moisturiser for every single bit of your body. My sister and I examine everything and talk too loud and laugh at our own jokes and attract annoyed stares. Last night I needed a toothbrush. The Colgate Professional ones were on special, and I found a funky silvery-grey one. "I must have the professional one," I said, "For what use is an amateur toothbrush?"

Deoderant buying is always an ordeal.

"What one do you use?" said my sister.

"I'm into Rexona Cotton Dry at the mo, it's hypoallergenic and smells so fresh and pure."

"But do you get the stick or the roll-on?"

"I've tried both, but I prefer the roll-on."

"What's wrong with the stick? I've tried the stick. I like the stick. It goes on dry."

"Yes, but I prefer the reassurance of the roll-on. Sure roll-ons are moist, but if it's moist I know it's there and it's doing it's job."

She got the stick.

Tissues take awhile to buy, too. This was because as a child, my cheap-ass mother only bought Home Brand tissues, so I may as well have blown my snoz on steel wool. But now that I am free and independent, I take my sweet time buying tissues.

"Have you tried the Kleenex Aloe Vera ones?" I said to Rhi, "They're a caress on your nose. Like silk!"

She ignored me, but told me when we got to the dog food aisle that a guy was listening in and when I turned around, he scooped up the box, peered at the label, and put it in his shopping basket. I should have been a car salesman.

Nowadays they make things difficult by having all sorts of crazy designs on the tissue boxes. I am fond of a Sorbent box that has a classy black and white photo of a city skyline, while Rhi has a penchant for the polar bear box. There was a new one with geese and flowers and stuff in a lovely blue, but we deemed that "too mothership" and chose one with white tulips on it, sparkling with dew. Lovely.

I spend too long choosing dog food, and this worries me a little. I am sure passers-by think we're po' people and that's all we eat. And circa-1994 trackydacks and holey t-shirt do not encourage opinions to the contrary. But Harry values the time I spend choosing his dinners. He likes the PAL Prime Mince & Pasta, as opposed to the more traditional chunky Beef and Marrowbone-type ones. And every week I get him one can of My Dog Beef Strips and Spring Vegetables in Sauce so he can feel like a pampered pedigree for awhile, instead of the trailer trash mutt that he really is.

The Fruit and Veg section makes me anxious. I can never find decent produce. I laboured over the bananas for ten minutes last night. You have to get the right balance of ripe ones for early in the week and greenish-but-not-too-greenish ones to last over the weekend. The pressure is too much. It's impossible to get the right combination.

The wait for a checkout is never any less than fifteen minutes, so there's plenty of time to lean seductively against your trolley and casually flick through an intelligent magazine. Except it's me we're talking about, and Woolies only has trashy magazines. Rhi was nudging me to check out a tasty male specimen as I read Soap World. I was scoffing at the news that Macy on Bold and the Beautiful may not have died in that inferno after all when Tasty Specimen came over our way. He picked up a magazine off the rack just as I snorted, "What a LOAD OF CRAP!". He frowned at us like we're bugs then took his loveliness far, far away. D'oh.

And finally, payment. I never have cash on me, but EFTPOS makes me nervous. I fumble with my card. I always put it in the wrong way up. I get panicky that I'll forget my PIN, and end up pressing the wrong button. I've solved that problem now though, I just hit the Credit button and pay by Visa. That way all I gotta remember is how to sign my name. Sometimes even that is a challenge, I tell ya.

Blatant misuse of apostrophes. Peach's! Banana's! You fucking moron's!

We ventured over the border this morning to Queanbeyan to go fabric shopping at Spotlight. Urgh. It's a mere 10 kilometres away from the ACT, but feels like a world away. Not that Canberra is exactly a thriving metropolis, but Queanbeyan has that sprawling main street with little floral beds at the intersections and fish and chip shops and passing semi-trailers making the shop windows rattle, that made us feel like we'd be transported back to our homeland.

But the deja vu got worse once we arrived at Spotlight. The front of the store was littered with bored husbands in Stubbies shorts and polo shirts, scratching their crotches and checking their watches. Inside was the largest congregation of frumpy ladies and screeching children I'd seen since my mother last dragged me to the school fete. There was a pack of them gathered around the Sale table, sqwarking over pillowslips and linen tablecloths like magpies over a sandwich crust.

And the fabric! Oh god, the fabric. Lurid prints, fake furs, sequins galore, piles of polyester, a dozen shades of aqua, turquoise and hot pink. It was like being trapped in K-Mart, circa 1982. Even the customers looked like relics from that era. My sister looked at me gravely and told me she was going to choke on all this tackiness. I was just about to tell her it wasn't that bad when I heard a mother screech, "Daaaaaaniel! Siddown and shuddup or you'll git the back of my hand!"

Daniel sat down. Daniel was about 6 years old. Daniel had a shaved head. And a rats tail! Shauna had to take a photo!

Give him 15 years, a Holden Gemini and a flannel shirt and I'M THERE, baby!

Check out this mutant gerbra. It's got two thingies! Whatever you call the bit in the middle. That'll teach my mum to buy dodgy last-minute xmas gifts from Woolies!

Cack! I just found this sample of Lux Embrace Body Moisturiser and decided to slather it all over myself. Now I smell as if I have been sauteed in roses. Oh I stand corrected, it's actually "neroli and ylang ylang, to caress and pamper". Caress? More like smother. I think I will attract bees.

I was wandering around Supabarn (Canberra's most ridiculously named supermarket. I always picture some lyrca-clad caped crusader stacking the shelves) last night without an aim, as is my usual manner. I was looking for the dog food, when I spied these pasty pale greenish things in the meat section, nestled between the kangaroo steaks and a huge skinned rabbit. "Crocodile Uppers", said the label.

Crocodile Uppers? Upper what, pray tell? Upper tail? Upper back? Upper groin? Upper fearsome jaws of death?

One of my colleague's Mum runs the deli at Supabarn (it's a small town) and says such delicacies are very popular with the discerning public servant wanker crowd. They also snap up the emu proscuitto and the kangaroo kebabs. What's next? Seared koala steaks? Platypus l'orange? Urgh.

I was trudging back to my car this eve with a trolley full of groceries when I noticed the Great Dane. A great big brown smooth-hair doe-eyed Great Dane, sitting on the passenger seat in a tiny Holden Barina, his oversized snout resting mournfully on the dash.

I'm a sucker for big brown eyes at the best of times, but when the big brown eyes are attached to a big brown furry body trapped inside a tiny white car with all the windows wound up, I saw red.

My sister, who'd gone back to purchase something we'd forgotten, awwwwed when she saw him there. I pointed out to her that all the windows were up. Then I asked her did she have a Post-It note.

There's thing with me and cars and Post-It's that goes back a fair way. Back in my crazy uni days we once happened along a car with two flat tyres. So I scribbled on a post-it and slapped it on the hub cab, "Hey. Your tyre's flat". Then we added to the other, "And so's this one."

And the poor soul who left their lights on one foggy winter morn: "You left your lights on, dickhead!"

Then another day we found this obnoxious powder blue Volvo parked in a place that was clearly not a proper parking spot. And knowing that the driver of said obnoxious powder blue Volvo was quite obnoxious herself, we promptly scribbled, "THAT'S NOT A PARK!". Which sat prettily next to the parking fine the campus nazis slapped on there 5 minutes later.

So today, I brewed about the doggy gasping for air for about 15 seconds before asking my sister, "Don't spose you've got a Post-It?"

She handled me the crumpled shopping list. Carrots, OJ, museli bars, laundry liquid, rice, ice cream, Harry Food... There was just enough room for me to scrawl my note: "GIVE YOUR POOR DOG SOME VENTILATION"

I chewed my pen in deep thought before adding "YOU BASTARDS!"

My sister grinned and carefully stuck the note to the door of the car, made some consoling kissy-kiss noises in the Dane's general direction before screeching to me, "Quuuuuuuick! Quick! Drive awayyyyyy!"

So we sped out of the parking lot, laughing maniacally. We were halfway back into the city when I said, "I wish we could have seen the owner's reaction!"

"Yessssss.... me tooooo."

Three minutes and a red light later we were back in the carpark, staking out the offending vehicle. I'm sure we were most inconspicuous, a big gold coloured car hiding behind a concrete pole and some abandoned trolleys in a deserted Sunday night carpark.

But we didn't have to wait long. A young woman with badly bleached hair, sweat pants and cigarette sauntered to the car. She plucked it off, read it, frowned, looked around furtively then tossed it away. The dog jumped around happily when she opened the car door.

"Woohoo!" my sister squealed. "Now let's go home!"

"No no no, wait wait. I want to get the note so I can scan it for my web page!"

"Just drive! DRIVE!"