Today, as if by a miracle, I've managed to cure my irrational fear of buying things in shops! Normally, I have to stress out about whether I should put the money on the counter or in the shop assistant's hands (the same goes for the items that I'm trying to buy) and, as Wobbles once wrote, I can't help but fear the ubiquitous bleepy-thingys that go off at apparently random intervals for their own entertainment. It could be said that they are like dementors that feed off of embarrassment as opposed to happiness, or ring wraiths that are drawn to the power of my fear (the ones on fell-beasts as opposed to the horsed kind...much scarier).

Only a matter of minutes ago, however, I bought two milk cartons and a single can of baked beans without breaking a sweat: one point to the fourteen year old...nil to 'Best One'. Mum's proud and my twin is glad that she no longer has to buy everything for me; Mum's so pleased, in fact, she's tied up my short hair into a Rohan-style ponytail. For those of you that haven't had the pleasure of watching the extended edition of 'Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers', the Rohirrim sport massive ponytails out of the tops of their heads, and through their helmets ; for a good example see Eomer.
Speaking of Mother-mine, she's now excitedly taking close-ups of everything we own with the new camera lens and exclaiming at the 'sharpness', though she does admit that she can't actually work out if anything is different from the old lense apart from a loud clicky noise when she takes a photo.
I'm hoping to drag out writing this blog as long as I possibly can in a vain attempt to procrastinate doing the washing up...I doubt that its going to work though; not only do I feel far too guilty to keep this up, but Olympia will definitely notice. Oh well...there are worse things I could be made to do (picking up the dog turd carpet outside being one of them)...