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Bond Street

By the end of February I realised that, despite the fact I had been in London for 8 months, there were still some museums that I had not seen. I embarked on a Museum and Gallery bender, to commence at the Royal Academy of Arts on my Tuesday off. Jacinta and I met in Piccadilly Circus only to discovered that my bender was getting off to a bad start - my cultural event was the next week.

So we went window shopping, as one does. We started out at Fortnum & Masons and went on to the lovely Regency Burlington Arcade that had its own guards and rules, including no whistling, singing or hurrying, and then Jacinta took me down Bond Street. Ooooooh, the shops! Unfortunately we had dressed down for the museum visit and I was too shy to sully the doorsteps of Cartier, Alexander McQueen and Gucci with my £20 pound sneakers and bad hair. We did go into Tiffany & Co though. Nice stuff. Once we got out of Tiffany’s we spotted a film crew with camera and presenter and another group that may have been paparazzi. As the man with the camera and mobile raced past us I heard him saying ‘I’m not going to be in Spain this weekend …’ oh the high life eh?

Just as we strolled off Old Bond Street and onto New Bond Street I spotted a small jewelers, and, more specifically, the most beautiful bracelet imaginable in the window. I promptly forgot all vanity in the desire to wear said bracelet, so I rang the bell, was buzzed in, and boldly asked to look at the bracelet in the window. The darling object was placed upon my wrist and I was officially the best dressed person in the entire world. Now, either I actually played my part very well or the sales girl was just extremely good, but she treated me as a buyer and as soon as I said hello assumed I was ‘exporting the bracelet to a buyer in Australia’ Oh la la. She wrote down two prices for me – export price and normal price. I had fallen in love with a £13,000 bracelet. The pain. So I told the girl I would ‘talk to my buyer’ and left, promising in my heart to find that elusive job that would enable me to buy such a trinket …

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