What am I a man or a mouse?

To understand my intense irritation with myself we must first go back in time....to before Daisy was born. I had not been teaching long, it was poorly paid paid work in the early days and I needed some extra work, as luck would have it after enduring a year of working in a youth club I managed to get some extra hours working in the boarding school attached to my school.
This may sound like the stuff of Enid Blyton, but nothing could be further from the truth. The boarders wing was originally intended to house the children of service men stationed in a nearby barracks. It was in reality a children's home for the various London authority's flotsam and jetsam, unloved and deemed better off away from the family home. My task was to facilitate a homework session once a week and every other week take them on a cultural trip. Trust me I earned my money, but I also became the teacher I am today, perfecting some fearsome disciplinary procedures to protect my sanity from children who had never ever been told NO! Basic demographics were 70% boys, 95% other cultures, (this in an area not famed for it's racial tolerance) I learned how to get a bus to stop by lining my charges up hidden from view behind the advertisement hoarding, I would stop the bus with myself and one small girl visible, once the bus stopped and opened it's doors the rest of my motley crew filed on much to the visible annoyance of the bus driver. What larks we had! I did try and introduce a little culture but invariably it would end in a police station with me filling in the paper work of yet another crime committed whilst my back was turned.
Early homework sessions were hugely popular so that they could watch television after supper, I would have upwards of 50 students to supervise many of them considerably bigger than me, I developed parameters that brooked no compromise and on the whole it worked.

So WHY when when standing in Toast on Saturday did I roll over and pay £35 for a necklace I did not want? Why was I so pathetically grateful that they swapped my necklace without a receipt? The look on their face when I told them I did not have it, you would have thought I had suggested a threesome with my dog! Seriously.
I had, two weeks ago ordered a necklace I had seen in the catalogue to LOOK at, but in a flurry of guilt and gratefulness getting them to swap the other necklace I then ended paying for the bloody thing without even being allowed to see it. I felt sick, especially when I realised not only was it £10 more than I expected, but it was the flimsiest bit of chain I've not seen since pulling the chain in my grandmas outside toilet.
So now I will have to go back AGAIN and endure the humiliation of returning yet another piece of jewellery only this time I WILL have the receipt.

I found the entire day slightly troublesome, I knew it would be bad when having procured a ticket to the Grazia breakfast celebrating the Valentino collection for GAP, (YES I know I'm a hypocrite) but that frilly hoodie was lovely wasn't it? Then I realised I would not make it in time after dropping Leyla off at school. Instead I went to the V&A where I manged to loose my creative Mojo and achieved very little other than to lust greatly after the jewellery in the V&A shop, you can begin to see my new obsession can't you? Everywhere I go I see amazing jewellery to lust. I then found Few & Far which was far too bloody pricey for me, but yes, the stuff they sell is very lovely. I wandered down to look at the Harrods Christmas windows which true to form were tacky, tasteless, trash.
I then for some God forsaken reason bought a skirt in Zara so frumpy that when I tried it on at home Yohji turned in his asymmetric boiled wool suit and gave me look of such contempt that I threw it back in the bag and vowed to never darken Zara's door again.