Why, oh why am I so incompetent? Given I am an intelligent, degree-educated adult, with 34 years of life experience under my belt, why am I unable to perform one of life's most basic tasks? The problem is the amount of time I have recently spent “re-shopping”. This is the task of returning freshly purchased clothes and shoes that do not actually fit me , and exchanging them for the right size. Reader, I do this a lot. It pains me. It shouldn't be this difficult to get right. I am one of those lucky people whose shape does not change much, and my shoe size not at all. Yet time and again, I come home with the latest purchase, try it on and weep because it is so blatantly the wrong size. Clothes are an occasional incompetence, but shoes are a full time occupation: choosing them, buying them and then doing it all over again. My success rate is barely 50% for shoes. And these aren't cheap numbers I can discard without a care: oh, no. That would be too simple. These are expensive, financially significant mistakes: the LK Bennett work pump {£129, too small} the LK Bennett court {too big, £149}, the Italian designer kitten heels {£249, too small}, the Winter Boot {a bargain at £89, way too small}, and the latest cover-yourself-in-glory-moment: the £175 Prada pumps which I simply don't like.

Weekend before last was a special one, where both the Winter Boots and the top I bought were the wrong size. So the following few days were spent calling the shops trying to find the right size that I should have bought in the first place, after which I trailed round the shops again, receipts in hand. Mostly I've never worn the items in question, but the Winter Boots I had worn into the street just long enough to know that a Chinese-foot-binding, toe-snapping moment was fast approaching. Therefore the attempt to swap them for the right size went as follows: “I haven't worn them, I'd like to exchange them” “But look at the soles of a new boot, madam” “Oh”. Toes curl with humiliation at being caught lying by a sales assistant. Do I walk away? No, I buy a second pair, this time the right size. Humiliation was my friend, and now I have 2 pairs of the Winter Boots, in different sizes.

What I really hate is that I keep making the same obvious error [namely, it doesn't fit]. Greed at owning that perfect item overcomes all vestiges of common sense and I buy the wrong size. It's the level of incompetence that offends me, the number of times I repeat exactly the same mistake. I do it so often that I consider myself to be a professionally incompetent shopper, if you will. All my shopping trips are now accompanied by a high degree of paranoia, and I've lost all sense of trust in my own judgement, i.e.: “Does it fit? How do I know? I always get it wrong, so why ask me?” I then try and hand over responsibility to the sales assistant, and it goes downhill from there. If I don't know, why would they?

And so on to the sexual mores of the 30-something. Dating is a challenging game and sexual politics in your 30s make it more so: you both know what you like and you expect a certain level of expertise. The latest candidate is not, I fear, ever going to make it to the bedroom. On the “3 strikes and you're out” principle, he's blown it.

Date 1: he can't kiss. He's heading for 40, and he keeps doing this lizard thing with his tongue. How come nobody told him? To tell him now means pointing out to him that he's been rubbish at it for the last 20 yrs; letting it go means snogging Lizard Boy forever.

Date 2: we're having a pleasant, albeit lizardy snog goodnight {his tongue and mine are doing battle, I might be winning} when his hand takes mine and places it firmly on his bulging trousers. Am I supposed to be impressed you've got a stiffy? Coo in amazement? Drop to my knees in ecstasy? Look, I'm a grown up. The hard-on is no longer a source of wonderment or surprise. I know it's there {I'd be insulted if it wasn't} but I'll go there when I'm ready, and I don't need directions.