I went to Glasgow and I bought...

Do you remember that children's Memory Game where you start off: "I went to the shop and I bought:  a bag of apples" and then your friend says "I went to the shop and I bought:  a bag of apples and a cucumber" and you bat the list backwards and forwards adding items until it becomes impossibly long and someone slips up and forgets an item? 

Well, last Wednesday / Thursday I went to the Glasgow branch of Mandors.  On Wednesday, I spent over an hour wandering the shelves in a daze, occasionally shoving a bolt of fabric under my arm and wandering a bit further, before returning it to its place with a sigh.  I bought nothing at all on Wednesday, but returned to my hotel and wrote a list of everything I had seen and liked.  It was a very long list!

On Thursday I went back and spent another hour picking things up and putting them down again, sighing and getting grumpy with myself. 

I am very bad at decision-making. Faced with an entire shop full of beautiful and ugly fabrics, I tried to find things I had seen or searched for elsewhere on line:  mustard corduroy (no), the right shade of orange cotton drill (no), Liberty Ornithology print tana lawn (no).  So then I went round the shop playing "I spy...", finding fabrics other people had used:  Karen's dinosaur camoflage fabric (yes), Shivani's elephant print viscose (yes), YesIlikethat's ballet dancer print cotton (yes) - but why?  I wasn't going to copy any of them, and I knew it!

So then I looked for things of fabulous quality that I would regret leaving behind.  I pulled out bolt after bolt of Paul Smith shirting in every possible colour of stripe:  turquoise, lime, orange - ooh yes, all of those please!  And some amazing double-faced cotton sateen in duck egg blue / khaki - oh wow!  And some heathery silvery grey stretch cotton twill with astonishingly good "hand" and recovery - ooh!  And some heavy cord-striped cotton for a dress:  cobalt blue and white - sizzle!  And some digitally-printed tie-dye jersey in shades of inky grey green black - edgy!  And some lilac and white check linen / cotton mix - truly lovely and the end of the roll, so unmissable really...

...and what did I actually buy?  In the end, I managed to buy the only thing I knew I really couldn't go home without:  one metre of the perfect colour of indigo and marl grey striped cotton jersey to make another Renfrew.  Sigh.  (Mind you, I ought to get another pair of knickers out of the remnants!)

Topshop jeans for people
 with incredibly thin knees

On Friday I emailed the shop and asked if I could mail order some stretch cotton twill in a chalky royal blue.  I could describe its exact location in the shop!  I didn't buy it at the time because I knew it didn't have enough "recovery"  to survive a day sitting at my desk masquerading as skinny-leg trousers.

After leaving Mandors, I tried on three pairs of ready-to-wear rich blue jeans, only to find they made me look like a Smurf (short with over-sized knees), and an overwhelming obsession to Make It Work was detonated and exploded while I was on the train heading north.  Oh dear.  Please reply to my email, Mandors - I was serious!  Do I really have to ring you up and beg?

And what have I learned from this?  That sometimes it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect to be the right thing... and that it is just as well I don't go shopping very often.