… because I haven’t been to one of their shops in ages. Well, ok, I was in the Cardiff branch back in June, but I didn’t buy much. Today, I wanted to stock up on my LUSH favourites such as Honey, I Washed the Kids soap (got a free sample of that too) and the new Porridge one. And I got a free gift for spending over £20 so I picked a White Wedding ballistic - I may save it for my wedding day bath.

I did get briefly confused because the Belfast shop had moved to the other side of the street, but I just followed my nose…

Visited W H Smith as well to get a pencil case for work (I chose a Mr Men one with pen/pencil/sharpener/eraser) and got utterly distracted by all the beautiful notebooks. I ended up buying a spiral-bound one with brown paper pages, and also buying a new Parker fountain pen because I’ve never got round to replacing the nib on my 125 and it was just as cheap to buy a new pen. With blue-black ink cartridges, too. I started to write in my new notebook, and it was pure delight - hopefully I can kick-start my creativity that way.

Also today, I am mostly … getting stuck in to all my new work

… and enjoying it quite a bit. New tools, new methods; lots of structured authoring which suits me very much. If I can just live down Monday’s absent-minded attempt to add an apostrophe to a document by applying my pencil to the computer screen, I’ll be fine…