Stress Shopping

I can add yet another item to the list of things that are dangerous for me to be doing/feeling while shopping: checking the BBC Sport website on my phone every five minutes to find out whether or not my consistently inconsistent football team have been relegated. Although dear ol' Wolves have been hovering in or near relegation for much of the season, they've actually been doing reasonably well. The trouble was that this has been a rather high-scoring season for the bottom of the table and depending on the results of today's matches, any two clubs from Blackburn, Wolves, Birmingham, Wigan and Blackpool could have joined West Ham in being relegated.

The nerve-wracking relegation saga really began last Sunday. We'd already won our match against Sunderland and so on Sunday afternoon, Maman and I were listening to the weekend's other matches on the radio on our terrasse. We wanted West Ham to beat Wigan, Birmingham to lose to Fulham and Blackburn to lose to Man U. Having gone 3-0 up on Wigan, West Ham proceeded to lose 4-3. Man United, having just been declared the most successful team of all time, in the known Universe (well, in England, anyway), couldn't manage to beat Blackburn. At least Fulham did what we wanted.

Today, though, was Premier League D-Day, according to the BBC website (surely R-Day?). By the time I checked the scores today, mid-shopping, Wolves were 3-0 down to Blackburn, Blackpool were beating Man U (sounds like a variation on the Sports Illustrated jinx to me), and Wigan and Birmingham were drawing their matches. If everything had stayed like that, we would likely have been relegated on goal difference. And then came the desperate goals. The Wolves managed to pull two goals back -- not enough for a draw but it at least looked a little less embarrassing. Luckily for us, Birmingham and Blackpool ended up losing too and so even though Wigan won, thanks to their late goal, we were safe, while Birmingham and Blackpool went down with West Ham. If Spurs hadn't scored a winning goal against Birmingham in extra time, though, we would have ended up on the same points as Birmingham. We would also have had the same goal difference -- hopefully, the next criterion used to determine who stays up wouldn't be alphabetical order. (Incidentally, the names of the bottom seven clubs in the Premiership this season all begin with b or w -- my initials -- coincidence? I think not).

This was all rather stressful at the time and having been fairly good on the shopping front for the past few weeks -- this weekend I had already resisted the temptation to buy Anthro's lovely Lido Light skirt based on the fact that I own enough blue skirts already (almost all of my skirts are blue) and TopShop's nautical stripe sundress (which didn't quite fit perfectly), among other things. But it was getting close to full time when I was in the TopShop changing rooms with the floral print flippy skirt and a couple of cheap vest tops, I caved and just went and bought the lot. OK, so it was only £38 for the three items and I have wanted this skirt for almost two months. In fact, I've tried it on several times before in various combinations of size eight and size ten, regular and petite, but the eights were too short and the tens too loose. Finally, I came across a size eight tall version and tried it on and despite me not being even average height, let alone tall, it fit well.

Although this wasn't exactly an impulse purchase, I do blame my football-related nerves for going ahead. I must remember not to go shopping this time next year when my consistently inconsistent team will no doubt be in the very same position.