I am going to Primarni to get something to wear for the Dave date. It's taken two expressos to be here as I realise I've picked the day the new Oxford Street store opens. Every teenage girl in the world is waiting with a mobile cemented to her ear and a handbag the size of a small country wedged under an armpit. Attractive.

The doors open and I go with the rush of the crowd, forced inside even though my feet don't touch the ground. There are no men, except for burly bored security guards who must also be feeling a bit claustro as they're heading for the doors. Girls are everywhere, like ants in short skirts. This is a jungle, the taller Amazonian girls reaching up to the hangers on silver poles fixed high in the retail canopy, swinging them like marauding monkeys . Shorter pygmies such as me don't stand a chance, so I fight my way towards clothes made from the thinnest material known to man, thrown all around the ground. 

I am hot and regretting coming in. Dave is a nice bloke but not worth suffocating for. This will have to be quick. I see a girl, about nineteen, loads of eyeliner and scarlet hair, stroking a black lacy dress. I like it and she has style, so I feel I haven't quite lost my mojo. 

'It's a bargain,' I say, smiling, picking up the dress and holding it against me.

'I love the lace,' she says.

I think how great it will look on her with all that red hair and flawless skin.

'I can't resist' I say, smugly adding it to my basket, buoyed by the fact I am buying a dress a nineteen year old would wear. Take that Dave.

She smiles back. 'My mum will look great in it,' she says. 'Thanks for helping me decide.'