I make them wish they had one

Of course in London we shopped. Or to be more accurate – one of us shopped while the other spent a considerable amount of time sitting in the Sad Bastard’s chair whiling away the hours.

Unfortunately not all shops have SB chairs. This is calamitous for the SBs who have nowhere to go – especially when it is raining outside.

There is only so long you can look at racks of women’s clothing  - in my case it is less than 60 seconds – and then I prowl the shop like a caged Lion making the sales assistants wish they DID have an SB chair.

Or – as happened in Cos in London – there is already a SB in the chair – and you just know he could be there for some time. In fact he was and I could not think of a suitable ruse to make him move other than standing near him and sneezing and he was not going to fall for that one.

One thing I do not understand about shopping is that you get the same shops in every city in every country.

Oxford Street in London could be Pitt Street in Sydney or Fifth Avenue in New York. The shops are all the same. This is not a worry to an intrepid shopper like Cate as these shops are as a candle to a moth.

But after that she bought almost nothing – which is good because we packed - as we usually do – as if for a trip across the Alps by pack horse - and left no potentially wearable article at home. Oh except for warm clothing – we did not have much of that so froze during the trip.

For some reason we did not really believe the weather forecasts.