This week has been much more difficult. Remember the eyeliner from last week, well as I went into deeper thought about this along with using this eyeliner a couple of times I noticed that it often broke. And one day it did it too many times and I then broke and so I wrote to Chanel. And they were lovely. They offered to replace it, but they were no longer producing that particular colour way. And I didn’t want another colour way, I wanted that colour way, that beautiful Fervent Blue with a tiny shimmer of sparkly silver in it, its exquisite.

And if I’m really, really careful, I can just about use it. But I know it will break and it really will be just for Christmas and New Year.

So I then started to explain my predicament to hubby, in context of the no buy year. I think at one stage he murmured ‘it must be difficult to be a Mandy’. But I brushed that aside, as I explained about having found that John Lewis still sell them and that they are no longer being produced, so they won’t be receiving any more and how very attached I am to this particular eye liner. But at the same time balancing my argument with how things like that happen all the time, mainly because of the marketing men and short shelf life of all things fashion and it will just give me another excuse to find a beautiful blue and sparkly eyeliner, but at the same time explaining that it simply takes years to find one that one truly loves.

I also explained that it takes 21 days to start a new habit and how important the no buy year is to me, as I simply have enough of nearly everything, apart from one blue eyeliner!

And then half an hour later I resurfaced from all of this self imposed anxiety and made a decision that I wasn’t going to repurchase, that this was exactly the sort of pain in the trial that I will undoubtedly experience many times, and is part of the process of the one year no buy.

The next day, hubby says, let’s go to Birmingham and we will buy that eyeliner for you. My heart leapt with joy, of course it did. And then a little while later, I thought, No, if I go into the store then it will reinforce all of my previous behaviours and before you know it I’ll be running amok in the aisles of Chanel and YSL, sniffing and poking and touching whilst having a lovely time!

And he left it, and then he said half an hour later, ‘Why don’t you go online, I want to buy you this, it will cheer you up’. (I’ve been a bit blue in other areas of my life of late) And I looked at him and I thought what can I do with a hubby like you! He knows what I’m doing so he is giving me a way out, with him buying it, not me. Then proceeds to tell me about his new found wealth from winning the lottery, all £134.00 of it and he wants me to spend it on makeup!

Apart from thinking ‘oh bless you’, I realised that I hadn’t stocked up on my essential (for me!) life affirming ingredients, and if it makes me happy and it will be going out of stock maybe I should. I popped in an eye shadow for good measure that I’ve been looking at for ages and I’m good to go.

I think he’s right, sometimes it is difficult being a Mandy.