The Adventures of Tallulah Bloom and Reginald Perrin

It was horrible, mid November in Christmas shopping madness was not part of the plan, I opened the doors to House of Fraser and it honestly looked like a jumble sale with garish decorations and scary heavily made up women spraying stuff at me, I saw fear creep on to The Talented Mr. Rigby’s face.

I bravely soldiered on and tried on roughly 12 million coats, none of which were the ones I had looked at and dutifully printed out for my shopping file (yes I am that anal) but to my horror none of them would do up. So I sneakily started trying on a bigger size and then I found one, purple with a belt, I put it on and walked to the odd looking mirror. It was miracle, I looked slim, thin even with a clearly defined waist, why this coat was magic. But then I looked again and I thought to myself wow I even look taller, I twirled and twirled deliriously happy with my magic slimming and lengthening coat. On the third twirl I noticed a girl trying on a coat at another mirror. Her mirror looked very different to mine, it wasn’t shiny or kind of convex like mine. Then it dawned I was standing in front of one of those fairground mirrors that distort the real you. I sneaked up to the proper mirror to check myself out. The coat was not magic and I was still short and fat. And worse, now I was inconsolable. The Talented Mr. Rigby tried to help by fetching new coats for me but I was in quite a strop by then. Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted an indigo coloured coat that looked like it may hide all my lumps and bumps, so I bought it quick as a flash and then went to the pub for a pint and a packet of cheese and onion crisps.