Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

it.
    The man in the shop promised to deliver the table later that afternoon; I assured him I would be there to take delivery. On the way back home I bumped into Hassan, the Algerian Big Issue vendor who sells his magazines outside Sainsbury’s. This added about half an hour to my journey: He is a very sweet man but he is also one of those people who answers the question,‘How are you?’ honestly; and since he appears to be afflicted by an enormous variety of minor ailments, there is not such thing as a brief conversation with Hassan.
    By the time I arrived home it was obvious that Jude had been home and gone out again, not least from the note taped to the front of my computer screen. In an angry red scrawl she had written:
    We need to talk. Be in tonight. DON’T go out. Will be home 6-ish .
    Next to my computer lay my credit card bill and the pile of receipts I had been going through. I had been so freaked out by Dan’s call I’d forgotten to hide them. So no prizes for guessing what tonight’s conversation would be about.
    I spent the rest of the day procrastinating – I couldn’t seem to concentrate on any one task for more than a few minutes. I did the washing, tidied the house, reorganised my wardrobe by colour and watched four episodes of Gilmore Girls back to back. I tried on four different outfits for the Thursday night date, but none of them looked right. I browsed job websites but couldn’t find any further posts to apply for. In any case, surely one of the applications I had sent off that morning was bound to yield something?
    The reason for my lack of concentration was, of course, the fact that I was waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for it to ring, hoping for it to ring, dreading it ringing, since I had no idea what I would say, if I were to say anything at all, if it did ring. It didn’t. I feltcheated, I had missed my chance for closure. Still, maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe the Thursday night date would go so well that all thoughts of Dan would be banished for ever. Somehow I doubted it.
    The date was Ali’s idea. The man in question was a friend of one of her clients: a trainee solicitor at a City firm, he was allegedly very bright and very attractive and destined for great things. At first I refused.
    ‘It is way too soon, Ali,’ I protested. ‘I’m a mess. I can’t see anyone now.’
    ‘You can and you will,’ she replied. ‘We both know that the only real way to get over one relationship is to distract yourself with another one – even if it’s just an in-betweener thing. The moment you’re shagging someone else you’ll stop thinking about shagging Dan, or not shagging Dan, or the fact that Dan’s shagging some Yank.’ She had a point.
    I was still contemplating possible date outfits when the doorbell rang – my new bedside table was being delivered. Unfortunately the delivery man had barely managed to get it through the door when Jude showed up – and she had a surprise for me. She’d brought Ali along, too.
    ‘What is this?’ Jude demanded, staring at the bedside table which was now sitting in the middle of the living room. ‘Oh, please don’t tell me,’ she went on, ‘you’ve been shopping!’ She grabbed the pile of receipts which were still sitting on the kitchen counter (why the hell hadn’t I got rid of those?) and waved them in my face. ‘This has got to stop, Cassie.This is totally insane,’ she yelled.
    The delivery man, who was nervously inching past her towards the door, said, ‘If you could just sign here …’
    ‘No!’ Jude shouted at him. ‘She cannot sign. Take it back. She doesn’t want it.’
    ‘But, but …’ he stammered, ‘it was in the sale. We can’t take it back.’
    ‘Yeah!’ I said triumphantly. ‘They won’t take it back.’ I signed the receipt and the delivery man fled.
    Jude stood in the middle of the room, almost purple in the face. Ali stood at her side. She didn’t meet my eye.
    ‘OK,’ Jude said. ‘We get it. You lost your job, your horrible boyfriend dumped you for another woman, it’s not very nice. But you cannot do this. You can’t just spend your way out of every problem you ever have.’
    She was right, of course. I had been overdoing it, but I was suddenly furious at being ambushed like this. And for some reason, it was Ali, who hadn’t yet said a word, who I was furious with.
    ‘You got anything to add, Al? Because I don’t remember you complaining about my spending when we were drinking