Gripes week

Been a bit social this week. Celebrating a baby's arrival on Sunday night, met lifelong friend for lunch yesterday before prowling the dress floor of John Lewis and going away empty handed. I don't know what designers are thinking these days. We don't all want cocktail-y type dresses fit only for cruise dinners or the like. Nor do we want clinging, skimpy dresses that show every dimple, bulge and curve. Those frocks with deep V necklines and a rose of gathers off to one side are hopeless for the small busted among us. Then there are all the long dresses - who wants to spend a summer day in a floor length dress? Not me, I assure you. It isn't only John Lewis, either. Fenwick and M&S are guilty of the same problem. Dress designers of the world - unite, I beg you and produce some nice plain summer dresses we'd like to wear.

After the dress hunt disaster I went of to get some new glasses. Like most things these days, it is so easy to build up astronomical prices while visiting an optician. Frames one price, lenses another, add more if you want thinner lenses, varifocals, madam? That's another...it just goes on. Before you know it, you've spent nearly £600  - and no, they're not photochromic. (If that is the right word - my chosen pair, the nearest I could get to the silhouette rimless ones that have lasted me the longest - they do not change according to light intensity)

Still, I had to have them. My current pair are scratched so badly the optician looked them, then looked at me and said How did you do it? I explained that I walk a dog in the woods and branches have a habit of swinging about and hitting me in the face on windy days. I had a black eye last week and dh was worried people would think he had hit me. (Mind you, he had the same fear the day my front crown broke when I bit into a French baguette and had to wait til I got back to England to get it replaced. I don't think anyone ever thought that, because they know dh so well....