In an act of supreme self-sacrifice, I was up at 7am this morning to venture forth into Ipswich on the trail of a birthday present for someone not a million miles away (135 miles away to be precise). I'd already managed to pick up a small gift from the window of a dodgy Brighton backstreet store during a powercut on Monday afternoon (strange but true), but having casually mentioned that fact to Lisa, the chances of me being able to stop her laying her hands on it before the 25th are frankly slim (she'd get hold of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction within five minutes if someone told her they were a birthday present). So I felt I should hedge my bets and purchase a back-up gift.

Sadly I failed in my quest to buy a Labradoodle...



... which as everyone knows is a cross between a Labrador and a Poodle. I was working to a budget, and the Pound Shop was right out of them. Which is probably just as well, as Lisa's roped me in to cat-sitting with her in October on the grounds that "I'll forget to feed it", and her sister's record on small furry animals doesn't stand much scrutiny either (The Gerbil Slayer of Brighton is all I'm saying). So anything more than a houseplant and a couple of Sea Monkeys is probably asking too much.

Undeterred however, I spent a joyous three hours trailing up and down Ipswich town centre, by the end of which I had successfully purchased a range of over-priced white elephants (not literally - Lisa would forget to feed them) which I'll be gift-wrapping and hand-delivering to Brighton within the next fortnight. Unless I'm a bit short next week, in which case I'll be straight down Cash Converters.

I then returned to the Foundation Street car park, where I had decided in my infinite wisdom to park for the first time (for reasons I refuse to divulge in this blog, in a shameless attempt to create an air of mystery), to find they were happily charging me £5.20 for the privelege of occupying one of their concrete spaces for the morning. It's an outrage. I could have bought half a cheesecake with that.