Hurrah for my first nude trip

I hate shopping.

Yes, I did just say that. I hate clothes shopping, shoe shopping, bag shopping, whatever shopping. I don't know when this happened. All I know is one day, at some point in my twenties, I woke up to the realisation that I loathe shopping. All those hours spent at shops trying on items that don't fit, spending money on clothes that barely last a season in my fickle mental closet (why do clothes become old and boring after one season?), random salespeople palpably lying to me that I have no arse (or that I look good in green - which I don't. Or that I should try on something else. Or that I look slim in something. Or that I don't look slim in something that I like. Or that I should try on some other item. Or that I should apply for their store card.)....all of that seemed a waste of breath, a waste of life. I try to run out of shops. When I'm caught in one, I deep breathe.

But I must spend my money on buying winter clothes for the upcoming trip to see M., as I have very few winter clothes, having thrown most of them out when I moved to Hong Kong. I've been told it's very cold in New York. But there is a bookshop in the shopping mall I'm planning to go to later. And the last time I went past it, I felt compelled to buy three books. I can see it now, it will beckon me to buy Paul Martin's "Counting Sheep", Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake", Tibor Fischer's "Voyage to the End of the Room", Alexander McCall Smith's "The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency"... Or should I finally get around to reading Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" or Bruce Chatwin's "The Songlines"? Or...

I think I will be arriving in New York naked.