DAY 39--Cheap Jewellery

This, I hope, is a timely post; coming as it does ahead of Valentine's Day.  It may help to steer chaps away from one of the top 10 worst Valentine's Day gifts--cheap jewellery.  I can't help thinking that the people who compiled this list on the internet were a bunch of innocents.  Cheap jewellery? stuffed toys?  What about razor blade stuffed gateau? A dead kitten?  The clap?  But perhaps this is just me, the novelist, dreaming up worst case scenarios as usual.

I am actually a big fan of cheap jewellery, provided it's stylish cheap jewellery.  Diamonds are a girls best friend, true.  But only in the sense that you can flog them and buy tons of other stuff that you actually prefer.  I have never hankered after diamonds for themselves.  Here's the assortment of cheap jewellery I'm sporting today:

I took this photo myself as you can probably tell.  It was the second attempt.  The first unaccountably gave me several chins.  The green and purplish seed pod necklaces were given me by the chancellor.  He bought them on a trip to our partner diocese of Matlosane in South Africa.  I wear them with pride.  The other wooden bead necklace (the one with a big hoop) came from Internationale, and I fear faces may have been ground in its production.  I wear it with shame. You can also just glimpse a more delicate bronze bead necklace, which I believe came from Accessorise  a few hundred years ago.  It has matching earrings.  I know, tsk tsk, matchy-matchy.  There's actually quite a bit of brown-purple-green coordinating going on in today's outfit if I'm honest.

A small girl once asked me (when I was in a similar tangle of beads) why I was wearing three necklaces.  I replied, 'A girl cannot have too many necklaces.'  She seemed to absorb this wisdom, and perhaps she will live her life by it.  You can tell small children anything.  I spent a lot of my time trying not to lie too egregiously to my boys when they were little.  My younger son has never forgiven me for telling him that vanilla pods were dried tarantula's legs.  But he loves me anyway.

DAY 34--Yield not to Temptation!

'Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin./ Each vict'ry will help you some other to win.'  This is one of the good old Nonconformist hymns of my childhood.  My sisters and I were in the habit of singing it if we caught each other with a hand hovering over the biscuit tin.  And how I needed a bit of Nonconformist soul-bracing today, as I went round the charity shops of Leamington Spa, resolutely not buying myself any clothes.

I was not, of course, adopting a bold naturist approach to shopping.  It was cold, so I had some clothes on.  Usual winter gear: treggings, boots, big jumper, big coat, rictus grin of the half-frozen.  I can now confirm that the best way of not buying stuff is not to look at it.  Do not pick up that pair of interesting black ankle boots in order to satisfy yourself that they are, old, made of PVU, not your size and ridiculously over-priced.  Never do that.  Because you will find yourself holding a pair of nearly new black leather Clark's ankle boots in your size, with fashionable buckle and strap detailing, for £7.  AAAARGH!

A weaker woman without a good Nonconformist upbringing might have sidled up to her husband, boots in hand, and mentioned that it was almost Valentine's Day.  But no.  Get thee behind me, Stan! (as the chancellor once typed).  Reader, I walked away from those boots.  And then I walked away from a little black fur jacket in my size for £6, perfect for those chilly annual dinners when you are required to wear an evening dress--and I go to more than my fair share of those.

I am so in touch with my Baptist roots right now.  Mind you, I would also be in touch with them if I'd gone ahead and bought the boots and jacket.  I would be riddled with Nonconformist guilt.  Trust me, our guilt makes Roman Catholics look like  a bunch of lightweights.  We can't even get Mary to put in a good word for us.  So forgive me if you hear me wandering round Lichfield singing: 'Fight manfully onward, dark passions subdue;/Look ever to Jesus, He’ll carry you through!'