I hate buying clothes. And shoes. I'm just not very good at it. Where some women delight in trying on a gazillion outfits, I would rather that the first one fit so that I can buy it and get down the pub/to the Apple store/back online.

I have hardly any clothes at all - if you've met me more than once you have basically seen my entire wardrobe. I have male geek friends who have more clothes than I do. In fact, I have male geek friends whom I suspect have more skirts than I do, and who wear them more often.

I live in dread of the day when I am suddenly struck by the need to purchase an item of clothing because I know that what will ensue will be nothing more than tedium, back pain and suffering. Indeed, so reticent am I that my friend Kate usually has to frogmarch me from shop to shop. That girl's armlock is second to none, I can tell you.

Usually, the only things that can make me buy clothes are weddings, the threat of imminent clothing malfunction, or a sudden and uncomfortable change in the weather. Such as, for example, the precipitous arrival of a summery day which forces me to accept that my ten year old Adidas Campus are just not suitable footware for the current climate. Thus did I today decide that it was time to buy a new pair of sandals.

I knew exactly what I wanted - simple strappy heels in baby blue. I think, in retrospect, that was the problem. I knew what I wanted and all I had to do was find them. Except that this season, sandals are either flat flip-flops or covered in crap - butterflies or flowers or equally vile manifestations of too much oestrogen (or, in fact, a vile manifestation of the projection by shoe designers of too much oestrogen onto the female sandal-buying population).

So I trudged round Richmond, trying not to throw up over huge bejewelled dragonfly-encrusted sandals and generally failing to find what I really wanted. By the time I'd run out of shops to look in, I started to downsize my expectations. Maybe I could live without them being blue. Maybe I could cope without strappy. Possibly, just possibly, I could live without heels.

No, sorry, some things cannot be compromised. I don't have too bad a pair of pins, but heels really do make them look longer and slimmer and sometimes a girl likes to persist in the delusion that her legs are worth showing off to the world once in a while.

Having failed to find the perfect pair, I end up going back to the very first shop that I went into to reassess a less than perfect pair which were the only ones I'd seen that didn't look like they were designed by a rabid hippy. Whilst waiting for the assistant to locate a pair of the turquoise sparkly sandals in the right size, I spotted a pair which were not blue and not strappy, but which somehow looked really nice.

I tried on the turquoise sandals and they were nice, but felt a bit wobbly. So I tried on the non-blue sandals and they were far more comfortable - I've always been a sucker for wood and leather shoes for one, and they felt so much more stable. Trouble is, they could only locate one size 6, and the other sizes patently didn't fit. Gah. I find a pair that I actually want and I can't sodding have them.

Thus am I now the less than proud owner of a pair of turquoise sparkly strappy sandals which may well break my ankle before the week is out, but which are at least not too vile. Even if they do make me look pigeon-toed.