Oxford. is indescribable.

I had the most successful shopping trip in Oxford with Sophie today. The shops there are just brilliant. We found a tucked away shopping centre, labelled simply as 'Market' and entered it on a whim, but with relatively low hopes. But what we FOUND there. It was brilliant. There was everything. Shops for ornaments, butchers, bakers, fruit markets, cake makers - and I mean speciality cake makers, they were fantastic - cookie parlours, shakeaway, jewellery shops, clothes shops.

The clothes shops. There was a really lovely purple one, that wasn't too expensive. And there was a really really nice dress shop that we found quite early on in our journey round the centre. On our third visit back to the centre I made Sophie go back in, even though we'd already been once. And there was this one dress. It was 'Reduced' from £69.99 to £59.99. But I'm still determined to have it.

Eventually Sophie managed to persuade me to try it on. But it's the sort of shop where you don't try things on unless you're planning on buying them. So we pretended I was seriously thinking of buying it for my uncle's birthday party (for which I already have a dress) and after I'd tried it, as the overly helpful shop owner tried to take it to the till, Sophie took it from her, saying

"I'm just going to take it back to the shelf, because there's one other dress she needs to try on" and promised that we'd try to be back before the clock shut - in 45 minutes - and would definitely be on the website. And with that, we left Oxford.

The initial reason we went to Oxford was that I had some River Island vouchers I'd received for my birthday that needed spending. We actually nearly didn't find River Island. But we did and I picked out two skirts. Only one was £24.99 and one was £20 and my vouchers were only for £30. But I kept justifying the extra £15 to myself, so Sophie pointed out that I clearly wanted both, and I bought them. Luckily, the £20 one turned out to be on sale for only £7, so I actually only spent £2 of my own money. Which prompted me to drag Sophie back to Accessorise and buy the skirt I'd liked in the sale in there.

I will definitely be going back to Oxford for my dress. I'll save and save until I can afford it and then I'll buy it. Nobody can stop me.

This is MY dress.

Isn't it lovely.

I'm really getting into shopping.

Before I go,

Thanks, Sophie, for coming at only a day or two's notice and for making the trip so enjoyable and persuading me to buy things that I really loved when I wouldn't normally have. Because I don't part with money easily. And thanks for putting up with me for a whole day! :D

Alicia xx