Industrial strength shopping

Bank holiday by myself saw me at an eerily empty Oxford Circus at 9.45am. Moped around outside Nike town waiting for it to open and blazed through to Covent Garden via Oxford Street in a whirl of changing rooms and shopping bags the second the clock struck 10. I didn't spend horrendous amounts of money, but the rate at which my bank account ticked down was scarily efficient. I was back at Earl's Court by 3.30pm with heavy bags and a persistent shoe-shaped hole in my heart because everyone knows that you never find what you initially set out to buy.

I can't help but feel that all British highstreet brands are pretentious and really not worth the blinding amounts of money they charge for what is clearly Chinese merchandise. Take, for instance, a pair of £140 pumps at Russell & Bromleys that maybe, sorta, kinda look like last season's Salvatore's. Without a second's thought, I would definitely pay that extra £100 for this season's originals, except for the fact that my conscience forces me to wait for the Boxing Day sales to make the guilt-ridden acquisition.

There's nothing to watch on TV now that the Olympics are done. The closing ceremony was as awe inspiring as the first. I felt the slightest stirrings of resentment in defence of the mother land when some British anchor person on TV pointed out that the IOC president didn't say that the Beijing games were the best ever, just 'truly exceptional'. More amusing, however, was the reiterated message about how hosting the Olympic Games is not about putting on the most expensive show ever. The London Games will have a budget of £9Bn compared to the £22Bn tab the Chinese have racked up, and based on inflation rates and the spiralling economy, that'll be something like £40 and a tin of baked beans by the time 2012 rolls around.

Anyway, I'm out of here. Weng is napping on the cushion next to me (very stressed out about not being stressed out about his impending exams, go figure) and is giving off an uncomfortable amount of heat in our sweltering 22 degree weather (there is no aircon!).