So I kind of taught myself to shop. I'd been in a 12-step program and I combined the 'letting go' techniques I'd learned there with a new-agey concept of intuition that worked well in other aspects of my life. And I did get better at shopping, I really did. But it took ages and much trial and error. To this day, buying anything significant involves much research, browsing and soul-searching until the heart-wrenching decision is made and I reluctantly hand over my debit card.

And then guess what happens? I convince myself that in fact, despite my gut feeling reassuring me otherwise, I have yet again stuffed up, under-researched, not done enough internet searching, not been to the right shop – what was possessing me that I didn't go there, what was I thinking?

I shouldn't be too hard on myself. The fact is, when shopping for a big-ticket item I'm caught between two competing needs – I can't afford to buy anything approaching the luxury model, but the bloody thing has to last for years. I guess an easy way of expressing this is that I'm looking for value for money. I'm an expert bargainer, and have perfected the down to earth, look-em-in-the-eye 'What's your best price?' once I've made up my mind.

Buying a new TV hasn't been my only risky venture of late. The familiar adaptation process had occurred already, soon after my brand new mattress arrived a few weeks earlier. (Allow two to three weeks for delivery because of Christmas/New Year? No problem. I could wait. It was going to be a big adjustment.) When it finally arrived it looked beautiful, so tall and imposing with its luxurious latex pillowtop ('You have to get a pillowtop', my sister had said, 'it feels like you're sleeping on a cloud').

I had been back to the same chain store again and again, going to different branches so I could pretend I was a new customer and spending 10-minute stretches lying back on the mattress I'd provisionally chosen – sales assistants advise that you have to lie there for ages before you get any idea of what a mattress feels like, because at first it feels great just to be lying down.

(This was a horrible experience. The recession had just started and there was never anyone else in the stores, even on Saturday mornings. Just acres and acres of inviting beds. Sometimes I walked into stores and went straight to the beds and lay down on one of them and then the sales assistant would sidle up and say something like 'Looking for a mattress are you?' and it would all feel way too intimate.)

Anyway, once the mattress had taken over my undersized bedroom I quickly convinced myself that it had been a huge mistake. For a start it was almost impossible to make my bed. My pillowtop is so heavy you can't really hold it up to tuck the sheets underneath, except at the corners. And because it is so tall, it obscures the deco Danish bedhead I'd bought for a song on eBay only six or so months before. Then of course I couldn't sleep because the mattress was – well it was too comfortable! It felt too indulgent, too foreign.

And one morning, after a day of sitting, both on public transport and at a theatre, I woke with my upper back aching, having spent too long on my back in the hollow that the latex had soon developed. I rushed to the internet to discover the dreadful truth. Sure enough, latex pillowtops were notorious for sinking in the middle and creating bad backs! That was it, I was going to return the bed before it ruined my spine beyond all repair. Why, oh why hadn't I gone to Beds for Backs? No wonder no one was in those conventional mattress stores – they were all at Beds for Backs, looking after their spines!

But still my gut feeling said, don't worry, it's fine. You did make the right choice.

A similar feeling assailed me last night about the new television, after my electronics engineer friend had gone home. He'd adjusted the picture so that the golf no longer looked glittery and I could no longer reassure myself that I had indeed made a terrible mistake and would have to return this piece of crap forthwith or sell it to my sister. So the telly was just too right. The screen was too big, the experience too overwhelming after watching a tiny little toy box with a 'bunny ears' aerial for almost 20 years. This monster would swallow me up and turn me into a televidiot.

And then after watching a rock show I never normally bother with I drifted exhausted to bed, and my mattress, my mattress, well it just felt so comfortable, so comforting – so – right.

Until next time!