I’ve just had a very traumatic experience doing an online Marks and Spencer's shop. Well, not traumatic in the grand scheme of what’s currently happening on the planet, but traumatic in my small world given I’ve otherwise had a very nice day.
Back to M&S. My mum kindly gave me an M&S gift card for my birthday which was almost four months ago now. It’s been sitting and staring at me ever since and today I thought, ‘Just spend it!’ Now, I had a traumatic experience in Boots the Chemist yesterday when, to my horror, my usual body moisturiser - Soap and Glory - was £9.99 a pot BUT if I had a Boots Advantage card, it would be £6.67. This is part of a growing trend in British shops where large discounts are offered to the consumer as long as they sign up to a data theft card, sorry, I mean, customer loyalty card. And because I am becoming belligerent and non-conformist as I approach my elder years, I now refuse to play this data harvesting game. I also think it is grossly unfair that mainstream shops are creating two-tier pricing systems but, sadly, this is the way the world is going. I thought, I’ll try The Body Shop, which shut down all its High Street shops a while ago but now has a new online presence, but I soon discovered their prices have rocketed, so I gave up on a return to their pink grapefruit body butter.
Anyway, I thought, ‘I bet M&S do some nice body butters,’ and yes, it turns out they do! I chose two to try and popped them in my online shopping basket. I needed a couple of new bolster holsters (bras) so popped them in as well, and then, just as I was finding one more item to take me over the free delivery threshold, my basket lost the lot! For chuff’s sake!
I tried refreshing the page to no avail, so went through the rigamarole of putting the items back in the basket, and then adding a silk sleep mask to try now that the days are stretching out into Springtime. I’ve never used a sleep mask before; I don’t know how much panic I’ll experience when I wake up and everything is pitch black and I’ll think I’ve gone blind, but it’s worth a shot because otherwise I’ll do what I always do which is start waking at 5 a.m then having to get up because I’m AWAKE which makes for a VERY long day.
I went to check out my basket only to find it filled with double of everything apart from the sleep mask, so I had to delete half the stuff to get myself back to where I was originally before the basket lost everything but apparently didn’t. Sigh. And then I added the gift card, and paid the difference with my debit card. Pressed the ‘Pay For Your Order’ button and the whole screen went BLANK and I found myself back on M&S home page.
Well, I didn’t know if my order had been placed, did I? I spent the next ten minutes dodging between my email account and bank account to find out if anything had happened. The bank account showed the payment had been taken. Still no email. And then, just as I was girding my loins to tackle M&S Customer Services, I received an Order Confirmed email. Phew! Shopping never used to be this stressful. Bloody technology.
But, as I said before, today has been a good day. Following the triumphant success of my Shark Hydrovac purchase, yesterday I ordered a Shark vacuum cleaner and this morning it arrived! One of these:
I took it for an immediate test drive and my goodness it is excellent! My new best friend!! Spent half an hour doing some happy vacuuming and then I set about having a tidy out and rearrange of my writing room, which was both satisfying and cheering. The weather has been really lovely today - blue skies and sunshine - which always lifts the soul. And then I did some writing, read for a while, and Facetimed my mum for a chat. She told me she’d won £140 on the Lottery and was going to spend it on a Chinese takeaway, hopefully not all for herself.
A few days ago, I decided that I am going to live the rest of my life being a boho-hippie type. Therefore, in honour of this momentous decision, I made another purchase today, of a lovely boho-hippie bag which was on Etsy and tickled my chakras. I have thought about creating another blog to chart my journey into boho-hippiedom but it all depends on my coming up with a suitable witty blog name so the idea is dangling at the moment, like turkey clackers in the wind. Anyway, the thought has cheered me and I am looking forward to having more fun with my life.
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KJ