Today's purchase

Yes, that's right, hot from the postman's mail delivery bag came this wonderful device, ordered especially in from my homeland.  I am having it installed in my boudoir.   My metered reading on the above device is usually -20 (except at periods of stress, such as those recently described in the treacherous Olive Oil Incident, when it goes positively off the scale).

I try to keep myself calm by listening to something soothing, such as Maria Callas, Brahms, or Killer Swarm of Death, an unsung Norwegian death metal band, now sadly disbanded due to their rampant Satanism and wonderful stage acts involving a boa constrictor, a cement mixer and a cream egg.

On the subject of cream eggs, I had never before heard of these chocolates.  Being American, we just don't have them over the Pond.  For the uninitiated, cream eggs are little oval-shaped bon-bons, labelled to contain a calorie intake of 5,000,000g of fat and sugar; they are a national past-time in the United Kingdom, everyone eats them, usually twelve in one go, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  They aid digestion and are incredibly good for the complexion.  Really, I find British eating habits marvellous.  I'm rather against tipping, per se, so when I'm being chauffeured around, and when some holds a door open for me or gives me impeccable service, I don't tip with money, I tip with a cream egg.  I know it is always appreciated and is helping to keep England a nation of fatties; after all, there's only one nation fatter than the English and that's the Welsh, although I know they won't be offended at reading this, as they don't actually read/speak English but some other language, called - I believe - Mandarin.