Remember the time I lost my favourite dress? And also a top?

I think I know what happened to them both. And the reason I think I know what happened to them? This weekend, I almost did it again.

This time around, my innocent clothing victim was a skirt. I’d bought this skirt a couple of weeks ago: it was just a cheap, cotton thing, but I thought it would come in handy for holidays (and yes, it had stripes on it, SO?), so even although it was a size too big for me, I decided to buy it anyway and get my long-suffering mother to alter it for me.

As with the Sorry Tale of the Green Dress, the first part of the plan was executed smoothly. The skirt was delivered to my mum, who altered it successfully and gave it back to me when Terry and I went round there for dinner on Saturday.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Well, we had dinner, then Terry and I drove home, where I spent a bit of time tooling around on the internet before going to bed. For some reason, though, as soon I opened my eyes on Sunday morning, the skirt was the first thing I thought of. “Hmm,” I thought. “I don’t remember hanging up that skirt last night, I wonder what I did with it?” I pictured myself siting at the computer the night before, putting Rubin to bed, brushing my teeth… No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t picture the stripey skirt taking part in any of these scenarios.

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that something BAD had happened (again), so I got of bed and went to look for the skirt. It was not in the office. It was not in the wardrobe. It was not in my handbag. It was not in the house AT ALL, in fact, and so my fear grew. Had I… ? Could it be…? No, I told myself, absolutely not. Not even I am dumb enough to make exactly the same mistake twice, after all, so surely all we could gather from the absence of the stripy skirt in my life was that I had forgotten to pick it up when I left my parents’ house, and they were, even now, finding it hanging across the back of the chair in their conservatory, and saying, “Look, that dumb-ass of a daughter of ours has forgotten the stripey skirt again!”

The thing about that though, is that, as I’m sure everyone is well aware, by now, I AM dumb enough to make the same mistake twice. And probably three or four times more. So even although I went back to bed to drink my coffee and read a book, as is my Sunday morning tradition, I did so with an unquiet heart, and a strong sense of deja vu. Terry, meanwhile, headed downstairs to begin HIS Sunday morning task of painting our back door red (That was just a one-off, by the way. He doesn’t do that EVERY Sunday. That would be weird.), little realising that we were in the midst of yet another Missing Clothes Crisis.

Which is why he was really quite surprised to find a stripey skirt lying smack in the middle of our driveway when he headed out to put something in the bin later that morning. “Look!” he said, eyes wide in surprise, when he brought the item upstairs to show me. “I found a SKIRT in the middle of the drive!”

For a brief moment, I was tempted to just tell him that, why, the Stripey Skirt Fairy had obviously paid us a visit in the middle of the night! But Terry knows perfectly well that if there’s something covered in stripes lying around somewhere in the vicinity of our property, it’s probably connected to me, so of course, the truth came out, and the conclusion was that I must have dropped it as I carried it from the car to the house the night before.

Luckily, the stripey skirt was none the worse for it’s night under the stars. The green dress, I would assume, was not so lucky.

From now on, no item of my clothing will leave this house unless it’s on my body. I’ll just have to hope I’m not QUITE stupid enough to manage to lose myself…

THEY WERE HANDED IN TO DOROTHY PERKINS!

I am amazed! And happy! Something I lost… has been found! And so has my faith in humanity, because I seriously thought that if someone found them, they would either keep them or stick them on eBay. But no: some lovely, kind person has found them, and has handed them in, my special, bought-on-honeymoon sunglasses, which I will never, ever let out of my sight again once I get them back tomorrow!

I have to thank Terry for this development. Having called the mall and established that they hadn’t been handed in to the lost and found there, Terry felt it would perhaps be worth calling each of the stores I’d visited last weekend to ask if, by any chance they’d been handed in directly to them. My mum also suggested this, and even volunteered to do the calling-around herself.

“Nah,” said I, slipping effortlessly into the character of a sullen teenager who feels the world is OUT TO GET HER. “There’s no point. They are GONE. I will never see those sunglasses again! NEVER! Remember the green dress? And the top? THEY NEVER CAME BACK. Also: I went into exactly one thousand and eighty-two stores, so I’d need to spend the rest of my life calling them all, only to have my hopes dashed over and over and over again, JUST LIKE ALWAYS. Woe! Woe! And again: WOE!”

And then I put on one of my Smiths CDs and sulked in my bedroom for eight hours.

Luckily for me, though, Terry is an actual grown-up, and still HAS his faith in humanity. So this afternoon he started calling round all the stores, and… well, you know the rest.

Thank you Terry. Thank you, kind stranger who handed in my prechus. Thank you, universe. I promise I will try to be more careful in future.

(I will also try and buy that handbag I spotted this afternoon that would be less likely to allow things to fall out of it. Well, it’ll be cheaper than buying replacement sunglasses.)

So, I lost my sunglasses.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking. Other than, “Holy hell, is this woman going to lose EVERY. SINGLE. THING she owns?” I mean. (The answer to that, by the way, is surely “yes”. Yes, it would appear that I am. ) “So what?” you’re thinking. “It’s just a pair of sunglasses! It’s not like losing a dress, say. And it’s February, it’s not even sunny for God’s sake!”

You’re right, of course. It is just a pair of sunglasses, but the thing is: these were SPECIAL sunglasses. (Have you noticed how I always lose the spechul stuff, never the totally ordinary, take-it-or-leave-it stuff? Yeah, me too.) I got them on my honeymoon, as a “reward” for agreeing to almost kill myself on a quad bike, so they had sentimental value, and I LOVED them.

Also: I’ve been surgically attached to those sunglasses ever since I got them. I know I’ve probably mentioned this before once or twice or fourteen times, but my eyes are super-sensitive to sunlight, so I always, always have a pair of sunglasses with me. Or maybe three pairs:

The passenger seat of my car, last year

(Oh God. The pair at the very front? Is THE pair. The LOST pair. It makes me sad just to look at them. Where are you now, oh sunglasses? Where did you sleep last night? Is some other girl loving you the way I loved you? Or are you perhaps sleeping in a cardboard box somewhere, probably under a bridge near a railway station?)

You see, for years now (since I was a teenager, in fact) I’ve had this paranoia that I’ll be out somewhere and it’ll all of a sudden turn SUNNY, and I’ll be dazzled by it and, I don’t know, go blind or something. (On a more practical note, if it’s sunny AT ALL, I can’t drive without my sunglasses, and I also whine a lot. That last bit has nothing to do with the sunglasses, by the way, I just whine a lot.) So I carry my sunglasses everywhere, and because I wear them so much I am generally prepared to pay a bit more for a pair I really, really like. That’s what I did with these ones, and for the past three years, they have been my constant companions. They have been to America with me. They have been to Spain with me. They have been to… well, they’ve been to America and Spain, OK? They appear in almost every single one of my holiday snaps from the past three years, and I had optimistically thought that we would have many more happy years ahead of us, my big-ass sunnies and me.

And then yesterday I lost them. Because that’s what I do.

Actually, that’s not quite true. Well, the “losing stuff” bit IS true, but not the “yesterday” bit. Yesterday I found out that I’d lost them. I actually have no idea when I lost them, and this is because the horrible weather we’ve been having lately means that I can’t even remember when I last had to wear them. Unfortunately for me, the whole “carrying them with me at all times” thing means I could have lost them ANYWHERE. The handbag I use has two zips which both have to be closed to make it secure, and because I’m lazy, I normally don’t bother, which means it would’ve been all too easy for them to have fallen out somewhere. Especially when you consider that it’s ME carrying the bag.

So, yesterday was one of THOSE days, and by that I mean, “One of those days which Terry and I spend turning the house upside down as we hunt YET AGAIN for something I have lost.” We searched the house. We searched both cars. We searched in the rubbish bins. We called my parents and asked if I had, YET AGAIN left something at their house the last time I was there. We called Terry’s mum and asked if I had, YET AGAIN, left something at her house the last time I was there. Terry called the mall I went to last weekend and asked if anything had been handed in.

Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Obviously, as the photo above shows, it’s not like I don’t have other, (albeit non-spechul) pairs I can wear for now, but seriously: how do I learn to stop losing stuff all the time? Is there some kind of a course you can take for that? Should I start tying all of my belongings to me with string (if I can find the string, that is), or should I just admit defeat and never leave the house ever again? I’m starting to think that might be the best idea…

Well, I’ve always suspected it, but now I know for sure: I was born without a brain.

The proof of this came on Sunday afternoon, when I decided to hit the town and do a little bit of shopping. This, I might add, was in addition to the shopping I’d already done on Saturday, and which had merely served to whet my appetite for the much larger shopping expedition that would be known as “Sunday”. Oh yes, Saturday’s shopping had been but the appetiser: Sunday’s event would be the main course, and I drifted off to sleep on Saturday night happily envisioning the long, leisurely stroll around the shops I’d enjoy the next day.

Of course, what I’d failed to take into account was the fact that the next day was Sunday, and that I generally like to spend my Sunday mornings languishing in bed, reading books, drinking coffee and basically being a lazy-ass. Yesterday was no different, so by the time I got myself showered and caffeinated, it was already almost 3pm, and most of the shops would be closing in another couple of hours. Undaunted,  I quickly threw on whatever clothes were available at the time, and headed out on my grand expedition.

It was only as I walked from the car park to the mall that I realised something was wrong. I felt… different, somehow. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I felt like I was walking funny. (Funnier than usual, I mean.) And the more I thought about this, the more I realised it was true: in fact, when I finally entered the mall and started walking across the tiled floor, I realised I sounded different too, in that one heel was making a particularly loud “click” every time it made contact with the floor, while the other one was pretty much silent.

“Damn!” I thought. “I bet the heel tip has come off this boot, and I’ll need to get it replaced!” So I stopped, and I looked at the offending boot. “Strange,” I thought. “The heel tip’s still there, and doesn’t look like it’s coming off any time soon.  And even stranger: THAT’S NOT THE BOOT I PUT ON BEFORE LEAVING THE HOUSE! In fact, I can clearly remember pulling on a different boot altogether. OMG, I must be going mad!”

But I wasn’t. Or, no, actually, I was: but not for the reason I first thought. Lookit:

Do you see anything wrong with this picture, readers, DO YOU?

OK, how ’bout now?

Yes! I went out wearing TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BOOTS! Witness:

Two. Completely. Different. Boots.

Well. As soon as I realised what I’d done, I felt like there was a giant spotlight shining down on me, out of which a disembodied voice was shouting, “Your attention, shoppers! Crazy lady here wearing two different boots! Feel free to mock her mercilessly!” Now, I’m 100% sure that most people in the world – and, more, specifically, in the mall – have better things to do with their lives than look at my mismatched legs. BUT. When you’re out in public wearing two different boots (and walking with a slight list, thanks to the fact that the heels on said boots are not exactly the same height, GOD) you just don’t feel like that. In fact, I felt like all eyes were upon me. I felt like everyone had noticed, and was laughing. And also that, if I was particularly unlucky, some of them would be saying to each other, “Hey, isn’t that the chick who has the blog about shoes? And who calls herself ‘Shoeperwoman‘? Could she not have at least tried to make sure her shoes matched before leaving the house? Doesn’t she OWN a mirror? Or a brain?” Or maybe, “Quick! Someone call The Fashion Police! Oh no, wait: that IS The Fashion Police!” Hoist by my own petard, people, hoist.

I tried to continue with my shopping, but it’s actually pretty hard to shop when you’re having to duck behind a rack of clothes every time someone comes near you, and of course, because The Others have such a strange fascination with me, it’s absolutely impossible for me to occupy a space inside a shop without at least six other people appearing and trying to squash into that space with me. I knew it was no good:  something would have to be done, and by that I mean, “shoes would have to be bought, what a shame!”

Luckily for me, one of the stores near the entrance of the mall is New Look, and New Look is a veritable haven of cheap n’ cheerful shoes. I lurched into the store, looking like a mad, drunk woman, grabbed a random dress from the first rail I came to, and used it as a shield to cover my legs while I ran rolled to the shoe section. Once there, I bought the cheapest pair of shoes I could find, which I put on as soon as I’d finished paying for them:

OK, they may not have been the absolute cheapest, but they were the reddest. I may be mad, but I’m not stupid. Oh no, wait…

(Do not be fooled by the appearance of these shoes, readers: they may look harmless enough, but these shoes are made of EVIL and they proceeded to rub my ankles raw as I walked around in them. Which I guess is what I get for not being able to dress myself properly. I’d like to say I’ve learned my lesson, but I think we all know I probably haven’t…)

Quick swine flu update: Terry had the vaccination yesterday, and, much to my surprise, so did I. In fact, they gave me the vaccination for the regular flu at the same time, so I felt a bit like a walking pincushion. Contrary to what we were told last week, it turns out that a lot of people who’ve been offered the vaccine have turned it down, and it also seems that new supplies have arrived, so there now does seem to be enough go around, and thank goodness for that! Despite the dire warnings we’d read about the vaccine, we’re both absolutely fine – sore arms, but nothing more, so hopefully we will live!

Now, who wants a random act of stupidity? Oh. No one. Well, here’s one from last week, anyway:

So, picture it: I’m at the gym, plodding through a run on the treadmill, and thinking about the half-assed fancy dress “costume” I’m going to wear this weekend. (Because, yes, we’re going to another fancy dress party this weekend. Hee!) Suddenly, though, the music I’m listening to is rudely interrupted as something small and rectangular goes flying past my head and lands with a sickening crash on the floor behind the machine. I twist myself round, while still trying to keep running, and, whoops! It’s my iPhone!

I hit the “Emergency Stop” button on the treadmill, and do a kind of comedy lurch as I try to keep my balance while the machine shudders to a halt. Then I jump off, grab the phone, and, oh, miracle of miracles! It works!

So I get back onto the machine, re-set it and start running again, this time thanking my lucky stars that I DIDN’T just wreck my phone, and wondering how on EARTH I managed to throw it across the gym. The phone, you see, was sitting where it always sits: on the shelf at the front of the treadmill. It had never taken to the air before, and I was just pondering the theory that I must have somehow got my elbow caught in the headphone cable and kinda flicked it across the room, when…

My music cuts out suddenly and a small, rectangular object goes flying past my head.

WHOOPS. I. DID. IT. AGAIN.

I once again performed my comedy lurch, and once again rescued the phone, and I am both surprised and amazed – totally AMAZED – to report that, once again, it was still working. Not even a scratch! My reputation in the gym, however, was in tatters, because although it was fairly empty at the time, needless to say, everyone there was crowded around me like paparazzi. D’oh! 

(Oh, and just in case anyone thinks I exaggerate about this strange behaviour of The Others, my friend Mhairi goes to the same gym, and has noticed exactly the same thing. So either the folks there really are weird, or both Mhairi and I exert a powerful magnetism that draws Others to us like Rubin to a radiator.)

I did get back on the treadmill again, but I’d only been running for five minutes (with my eyes firmly fixed on my phone and my elbows clamped to my sides) when Bambi Girl arrived. Bambi Girl is my shadow at the gym. No matter what time of day I go there, she’s there. I think she might actually live there or something. And no matter which machine I choose to use, she chooses the one right next to it, or just one away. I’ve experimented with using different machines, just to see if this theory of mine holds true, and yup: it doesn’t matter which one I use, she’ll be right there next to me, like me and my shadow.  I call her “Bambi Girl” because after walking slowly for ten minutes or so, BG will suddenly ram the speed up on the treadmill, execute this weird kind of Bamb-like leap into the air, and then run for a few minutes before her twenty minute cooldown. It’s actually quite impressive.

Not as impressive as my iPhone-flicking maneouvre, though.  I think The Others will have to go quite some way to beat THAT one…

I’m just going to keep this short, but slightly hysterical:

WE LOST OUR PASSPORTS.

We turned the house upside down looking for them. We searched for an hour. I even called my parents to ask if, by any chance, we’d left the passports at their place when we got back from Florida this summer. (There is a reason why every time my mother sees my number on the caller display, she answers with “What’s wrong now?” rather than the customary ”hello”.)

Finally, just as I’d started to type the phrase “OMFG I lost my passport!” into Google…

Terry found them.

IN THE VERY FIRST PLACE WE’D LOOKED.

Isn’t that always the way of it? (Answer: “No, Amber, not really. Not unless you’re an idiot, obviously.”) And the first place we’d looked? Was a certain drawer in my filing cabinet which I tend to think of as “the passport drawer”. No, there are no prizes for guessing why I call it that.

The thing is, though, I SEARCHED the passport drawer. About ten times. In fact, so certain was I that if they weren’t there, they must be gone for good (I know I’ve managed to lose almost everything else I own this year, but I am actually pretty careful about the passports. No, really.), while Terry systematically ransacked the house, looking under rugs, behind mirrors and inside the dog’s ears, I just kept circling back to The Passport Drawer and going through it over and over again. Mostly while shrieking, “I can’t believe we’ve lost our PASSPORTS! Someone’s probably pretending to be me in Cuba or somewhere by now!”

Then I would search The Passport Drawer again. And again. I know I’m something of an unreliable searcher, too, so Terry ALSO searched TPD, at least three times that I can remember. The passports WERE  NOT THERE. And then suddenly… they were.

I can only assume from all of this that at some point last night, our passports discovered how to make themselves magically invisible, and did it just to screw with us. It’s the only possible explanation. (Because it can’t POSSIBLY be that Terry and I are just STUPID. No.) If so, I can only hope they don’t ever decide to do it again, because I had to switch on my SAD light this week, and my sanity now depends on getting out of the county for a couple of weeks at least.

I think I’m going to give the passports to my parents for safe keeping. Also my green dresses. And… just everything, really. It’s the only way I can guarantee their safety.

(Oh, hey, that story wasn’t really short AT ALL, was it? Whoops.)

Yesterday, Terry ran his first 10km. Everyone say “Yay, Terry!”

It was a proper race, too: with hills, and other people and stuff. Not like the 10ks I run in the gym. He got a t-shirt and a banana at the end of it and everything, which, quite frankly, is begging for some kind of “I ran for 10 kilometres and all I got was this lousy banana” joke, but I will refrain. (I don’t think he even ate the banana, either.)

Anyway, as I said, Yay, Terry! You rock! And also: roll. And that’s why last night we decided to go out to dinner to celebrate. I wore The Dress. You know, the one that was lost, and then was… well, was still lost, so was re-purchased, after huge amounts of whining on my part? THAT dress.

What I failed to consider, though, was that the dress is question has a huge skirt. And it was a very, very windy night. Which meant that, the second I stepped out of the car, the wind snatched up the skirt of the dress and pulled it right up over my head. Like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, only much less classy and my whole head was covered by it.

Just to make matters worse, when I finally managed to tear the fabric away from my head, I saw:

a) Terry doubled up laughing next to me

b) An entire balcony’s worth of people outside the restaurant, all just sitting there watching me as if I was the floor show. One man in particular stood and blatantly stared as I walked the rest of the way to the door with my skirt clutched between my knees and the wind still trying to drag it up around my face. That man was NO GENTLEMAN, let me tell you.

We had a nice meal, though. And I managed to keep my skirt in the proper place for the duration of it. I’m starting to think that dress is just unlucky, though…

Remember the sorry story of how I lost my TAX DISC? And had to apply for a new TAX DISC? Because the old TAX DISC was lost, and when something is lost, you don’t have it any more?

(Don’t worry, the caps are there for a reason. I haven’t just developed a weird case of car-related Tourettes. TAX DISC!)

Did you, at any point in that story, get the feeling that, “Oh my God, we haven’t heard the end of this yet?” Because if so, you were right. Sigh.

First I had to print out and fill in a form. You know, to get the DVLA to replace my missing TAX DISC? That was a bit of a saga in itself, partly because I really suck at filling in forms (I used blue ink rather than the required-on-pain-of-death black ink, and I put my date of birth in the “today’s date” box), but also because this form contained a bunch of questions like: “Please enter your BlahBlah number. This can be found on your TAX DISC”.  And I was all, “Oh, my TAX DISC, you say? The one that’s LOST? As in, I don’t have it? Sure, let me just grab my LOST TAX DISC that I don’t have, so I can fill in this number from it, so that you can replace my LOST TAX DISC!”

It also contained the question, “How was the original TAX DISC lost?” Which stumped me a little, I have to admit. I considered two different answers:

1. Provide them with a link to this post.

or

2.  Write something along the lines of “If I knew that, I’d have a chance of finding it, and I wouldn’t have to fill in this stupid form, brainiacs.”

But in the end I went with option 3, which involved the laborious printing (in block caps! That I had to write with my hand! I don’t ever write by hand now. I barely remember how to do it, to be honest.) of a lengthy explanation that went something like, “Well, it was on the worktop in the kitchen? Next to the kettle? Or maybe the toaster? But the original tax disc still had a few weeks to run, and I was about to go on holiday, then with all of the excitement of the holiday (I touched a dolphin!!) I forgot all about it, and then suddenly the tax disc wasn’t there any more, and I think I might have thrown it out by mistake, but I’m really not sure. Do you know? Also, have you seen my green dress?”

It was at this point that I realised I’d used the FORBIDDEN blue ink, though, so I had to print out a new form and start all over again (this time I just wrote “I think I threw it out. Whoops!”), then I had to write out a cheque for £7, and I haven’t used cheques since about 1999, so first I had to find my cheque book, then I had to hunt down my Vehicle Registration Document, which they also needed, and I had to put these items into an envelope along with some powdered unicorn horn, a 4 leafed clover gathered by the light of the full moon, and a clipping from one of God’s toenails. Then I had to get into my car (which, did I mention, does not have a valid TAX DISC?) and drive to the post office, because apparently it’s still 1987 at the DVLA and you can’t just do all of this online, like a normal person. I bet they still use typewriters there, too.

So, all of this just to get a replacement TAX DISC, and do you know what the DVLA sent me this week?

Yes, they sent me…. a replacement VEHICLE REGISTRATION CERTIFICATE!

So that sucked. Remember the bit where I had to send them my existing Vehicle Registration Document? You’d think that would’ve been a clue that this particular certificate WAS NOT LOST. Unlike, say… actually, no, I can’t bring myself to say it one more time. And then I had to pick up the phone (I never “phone”) and go through the whole “Press 1 if you’d like to sit in a call queue for an hour, 2 if you’d like to be transferred to someone who does not speak English, or 3 if you’d prefer to just die now,” thing, so they could tell me they have no idea why they sent me a Vehicle Registration Certificate rather than a You Know What.

They tell me a replacement YKW will be on its way to me later this week. I await its arrival with bated breath.

P.S. TAX DISC!

It hasn’t been a good week for my clothes.  No, I haven’t lost any of them, but…

First of all I managed to dye my running shoes grey. Yes, grey. They WERE a kind of beige colour, but all of that running I’ve been doing recently had turned them the colour of mud, basically, so when I got back from Wednesday’s run, I decided to throw them in the washing machine, so they’d be nice and clean for my planned trip to the gym the next day.

“And I will throw a bunch of BLACK clothes in with them!” I thought. “Because THAT won’t be a disaster at all!”

But of course, it DID turn out to be a disaster. Because the running shoes came out of the machine GREY. And that’s how I came to find myself making the Least Exciting Shoe Purchase in the Whole World Ever:

running shoes, yesterday

(Yes, I have noted the irony of the fact that I replaced my dyed-grey shoes with a pair of naturally grey shoes…)

In fairness, I had been planning to buy new running shoes for a while. It had become clear to me that if I intend to keep up the running, I would need two pairs of trainers, one for the gym and one for running outside. Because the gym will probably throw me out if I keep trailing mud across their nice clean floors, and it’s not exactly practical to keep washing them all the time. (The shoes, that is. Not the floors. I’m definitely not washing the gym’s floors, no way.) So I bought these, put the old trainers back into the machine for another spin (on their own this time), and, of course, they came out looking totally pristine and back to normal, so I really didn’t need the second pair at all, except I totally did. Whew!

Anyway, as I said, when I washed the shoes, I washed a bunch of other stuff at the same time, and one of those things was a black sports top of mine.

And when I tried to iron that black top? I burnt it, so now it has a giant iron-shaped mark, right in the middle of the chest. Excellent!

And when I let out a shriek and ran to switch off the iron, lest I damage something else with it? I caught the leggings I was wearing (for yes, readers I WAS WEARING LEGGINGS AND I DON’T EVEN CARE, SO THERE) on the back of Rubin’s “den”, and I ripped those leggings to shreds. Well, shred.

Total damages for the day: one pair of running shoes (now thankfully restored to working order), one top, one pair of leggings.

Not bad for a day when I only actually left the house once!

Way back in June, just before I went to Florida, my road tax came up for renewal. And so did my car insurance and MOT. Actually, that’s not quite true: the tax disc was due to expire while we were away, and because of the general stress/excitement involved in going on vacation, not to mention all of the other car-related expenses going on at the time, I became absolutely convinced that I would forget to renew it, and when I got home the police would be waiting for me at the airport or something. Because clearly I have no idea how these things work AT ALL.

Anyway, I was so sure that Bad Things were going to happen involving this tax disc that I ordered and paid for it online the very second the renewal notice came in the mail, then I sat back and congratulated myself on being so freaking organised.

A couple of days later, the new tax disc arrived, but – and here’s the kicker – rather than sticking it on the inside of my windscreen, as required by law, it’s looking increasingly likely that I just stuck it INSIDE THE BIN instead. Or, you know, somewhere.

Then I went on holiday, in blissful ignorance of the fact that my careful planning had all been for nothing, and my car was now sitting in the driveway displaying an out of date tax disc.

Then I came home and proceeded to drive the car here, there and everywhere (well, to the gym and the mall), STILL without the tax disc. Terry drove his mum to the airport in said car-with-no-valid-tax-disc. Then, four weeks later? He drove her back. And still the tax disc was out of date.

Today, though, while out in the driveway, Terry finally noticed the fact that my car was sitting there being ILLEGAL. So he told me about it and I, of course, proceeded to freak the hell out. A fingertip search of the house was undertaken, but I knew that it was in vain, and I knew this because it’s only been a few weeks since the LAST search of the house, and I’d like to think that if the missing tax disc had turned up while I was searching for the green dress, I’d have noticed it. I mean, I’d LIKE to think that, but last time I checked I was still Amber, and you really never know with me, do you?

In the end I called my bank and was all, “Oh, hai, do you by any chance know if I paid my road tax in June?” Luckily my bank are used to such questions from me, and they confirmed that yes, I had, in fact paid for the new disc, so I am not being quite as illegal as I thought I was. It’ll now apparently cost me £7 to get a replacement disc though, and meanwhile I am sure – SURE – that wherever it is, it is probably with the green dress and missing top.

WHAT WILL BE NEXT?