Am wearing skinny jeans. After a year of flirting with this most unflattering of trends, it has finally come to pass. But they were only £12 from Primark, which is just as well as I think I’m getting deep vein thrombosis. Seriously. They’re tucked into my black boots, and my calves are throbbing and hurting like crazy, but short of turning the jeans into cut-offs there’s not much I can do until I get home tonight. Oh dear. It had to happen sooner or later – the first death from DVT caused by too-tight jeans. (For the next Actionettes club night we each have to pick a gristly cause of death (it’s the Monster Mash/ Halloween special), and I think I’ve found mine…)

It's now a few days later (a combination of Blogger being uncooperative, my boss hovering over me constantly, and the run-up to the wretched Frankfurt Book Fair prevented me from posting) and today I am dressed as the Hamburglar. Wearing black trousers, a long-sleeved stripy black and white tee, and a black sweater vest. All I need is a black eye mask and I can begin my burger-stealing spree!

Tomorrow I fly to Frankfurt for the day. I am excited to be going (it's a free trip, I get spending money, I'm out of the office for a day) but not too excited at the prospect of getting a cab at 5am (I'm staying over at my Mum's, as she lives slightly nearer to Heathrow than I do), and then landing back in the UK at 10.30pm, just in time to catch the Vomit Express from London Bridge after midnight. I've been looking on the web for vintage stores in Frankfurt, with no luck. I fear it's such a business town that all the shops sell souvenirs/wine and smoked cheeses/designer clothing. I still, eight years on, think fondly of the amazing, tiny, cluttered vintage store I found in Budapest: Victorian dresses and petticoats hung from the ceiling, ballgowns were crammed onto rails. The elderly woman who ran it wanted me to give her my copy of Time Out Budapest, where the shop was listed. I had to explain that this book was the only thing preventing me from wandering in circles for several days while slowly starving to death, as I don't speak Hungarian and didn't know anyone in the city.