Mayday!

I love bank holidays!

This one was slightly less exciting, because technically I'm on study leave now and wouldn't really have to go into school, but to make up for the lost excitement, we didn't spend the bank holiday weekend in Devon or visiting relatives or anything like that!!!

Its so nice to be able to have a holiday at home.

So anyway...

The decking (our latest home improvement plan) has finally been completed today. To avoid carrying paving slabs around or shifting bits of wood, I went into Kingston today.
I didn't really want anything, but my mum wants me to get new trainers, coz apparently my current favourites are 'grim'. I'm not actually sure how many pairs of trainers I have right now, as I'm not sure how many of the previous pairs I chucked, and how many I decided to hold on to for sentimental value. Personally, I don't have a problem with my trainers. I've had them for about 2 years, which is probably a personal record. I stopped growing about 3 years ago, which means that trainers last for longer. Also, I haven't really used these trainers for football much, coz they aren't football coach friendly. (If you're gonna have to chase em down the pitch every time you kick the ball, there's no point in putting em on in the first place! Leave em in the skate park where they belong!!!) So thats probably why they lasted this long...
Anyway... I was looking for trainers everywhere but I couldn't find them, because now that its 'summer' there are no girls trainers around. All you can get is flip flops. Which are great when its hot, but at the moment you're toes would probably end up blue...
They had male looking trainers out, but thats probably coz men wear trainers all year round...

When I was in one of the bigger shops (can't remember which one.... I traipsed round so many shops...) I was walking through the dresses trying to get to the shoes at the back, and I got stopped by a friendly looking woman who asked me for a favour. I agreed to help her (more out of curiosity than servant-heartedness...I mean, how many things can you help with in a shop?!). She held out a whole armful of dresses, and said, "I'm trying to get a dress for my 21 year old daughter, but I know absolutely nothing about fashions for young people today, so which one do you think she'd like best?!".
Woah.
I almost told her she'd picked the wrong person, but there was part of me that felt flattered that out of the many people in the shop, she'd picked me out as being someone who knew a lot about fashion. Must've been the sunglasses...
The thing is, I know very little about fashion, and absolutely nothing about dresses....
I had a look at them, and as she held them out, she told which designer made each dress. I nodded like I knew who the designers were, and eventually she stopped and looked at me, so I assumed she was expecting some kinda feedback. I stood there, staring at the dresses, trying to think of some intelligent sounding comment to make, and then she said, "If you think they are all ugly, or old fashioned, just say so. I won't be offended - I don't want to get her something she won't want to wear...".
One of them really was genuinely ugly, so I told her I thought it was 'last season'. Not that I'd know, but it seemed like a nicer thing to say than, "Eugh...that one is seriously ugly!!!"
I looked at the rest of them, and they mostly seemed like OK dresses. I asked her if it was for a special event, and she said, "No, I just felt like buying her something". That didn't really help to narrow it down... So then I asked, "What colours does she like to wear?!", and she said, "Whatever's fashionable...", which again, was not helpful...
I was trying to remember what colours are in. I vaguely remembered hearing that 'Red is the new Black', but then I'd also heard, 'Brown is this season's Red". And none of the dresses were red, black or brown. There was a really simple looking blue one, and it looked like it was a similar style to stuff I'd just seen in H&M (well...it was the same shade of blue...), so I told her I thought it was nice. There was a yellow dress I'd seen a C list celebrity wearing red carpet at some film premier in a really boring magazine at the doctors about 2 weeks ago, so I said I thought that one was also nice.
Then she reached out behind me, and pulled another dress off the rail. It was kinda pale pink with brown pinstripes (which actually looked niced than it sounds) but it was a shift dress. Princess Dianna is the only person who's ever managed to make a shift dress look remotely flattering, and I remembered a really old episode of 'What Not to Wear' when Trinny and Susannah had destroyed someone's shift dress because it made the woman look like 'an armoured tank', and the woman had burst into tears.
So I said I thought it was also last season.

Eventually the woman said she'd get the blue dress.
She was really grateful for all my 'help' as well, so I hope her daughter likes it. Apparently she's at Durham University...
She was a really nice woman, and she obviously really likes her daughter if she went through all the hassle of buying her a dress for no apparent reason. And not just any dress - a designer dress.

I asked my Mum why she never buys me designer dresses, and she said its coz the last time she made me wear a dress was at a wedding and I was about 9 years old and I ruined the whole day by making a fuss about it.
So I kinda don't blame her...