Picture the scene, if you will. Myself and my good lady are snuggling down after a hard day's work. My beloved turns to me and whispers in a voice thick with sleep that she'd really like a particular dish as her evening meal the following day. Today is that following day, so after work I dutifully tottered down to M&S to buy said dish. Also to buy a handbag. Not for me; the young lady is attending some fancy bash and we spent a sometimes fraught amount of time at the weekend selecting a number of alternate outfits for said do. She forgot to accessorise, however, so I was charged with picking out a suitable handbag.

I thought I could rise to that challenge, and scourged M&S - then one of the few handbag-selling emporia still open when I left work - for a likely candidate. No mean feat, as the designers at M&S seem to think that festooning daschund-shaped tubes of Pleather with zips, and artily stitching geometric patches of tan leather together in a manner no doubt intended to convey the impression that it was crafted by a wild man of Borneo, are the very height of fashion. I got news for them.

I waited more or less patiently in line behind a 20-stone woman apparently buying her annual wardrobe to pay for my prize, dashed downstairs to pick up the food, then burst, gasping, onto Oxford Street. I breathlessly phoned my darling to give her the glad tidings: not only had I got her a funky, smart bag, but I had remembered her culinary ambition. "Oh noooo. What did you buy that for? You have to cook it all and wash dishes and..."

Love you too, angel.

In her defence, the poor dear is tired and stressed, and quite understandably revolts at the thought of putting in one joule of energy more than is required. x