It happened in a very quickly. In fact, at first I wasn't sure whether it'd happened at all or if my eyes were just playing tricks on me. After all, it was ridiculously dark. Like Drew Baylor's 'last looks', this expression has cemented itself on my brain and planted a thought in my cerebral cortex that I don't think I'll ever shift: I hate Hollister.

For starters, who the hell invites members of the public into their shop by getting topless men to stand outside? I couldn't walk past without have a flyer and a nipple shoved in my face. Anyway, I take the damn flyer and enter the shop and immediately regret it. It's so dark I'm squinting like a backwards mole. The music is awful and loud. It's a shop designed for skinny people so there is no space to move between the french tourists and girls in tiny shorts hanging around waiting to be 'spotted'.

It's like The London Dungeon for hipsters.

Anyway as I wander around, bumping into stacks of £80 cardigans and stepping on the feet of pre-pubescent girls with more makeup on than I've ever owned, I notice the place is populated by pretty people. They just sort of loiter. Like handsome lampposts. The girls flip their hair and the boys flex their rippling muscles but they don't seem to be doing any actual working. We wait around for ages listening to some miserable frontman yowling on about love and his lack of it. I speculate as to how many members of staff have banged each other in the last week, month, year.

Then this tall blonde guy gets asked to go and do some work. My friend wants some flip flops in a larger size so he wanders off and gets a younger girl to run about finding said flip flops without messing up her hair. He comes back and mutters something about it not taking a long time. It takes a long time. Anyway, eventually we're all paid and done so we head to leave and on the way out we pass the blonde guy. As is custom in polite society I give him a smile of thanks and he returns the look with the expression that was the catalyst of my anger.

He just raises his eyebrows. That's it. Maybe a centimetre or so, but enough that he clearly expresses a look of disdain. Maybe second-hand embarrassment. He's thinking 'why is she in here?' I'm just glad I'm leaving. I push past the sea of nipples and into fresh, normal air.

Just so Hollister know for future reference - no, I will never buy anything from your shop and half naked men will not change that. Yes, like Bridget Jones, I will always be a little bit fat. No, I'm not going to change the way I dress because you want me to. I will wear comfy jeans if I'm wandering about London for a whole day. And finally, £80 is far too much to charge for a cardigan that quite frankly my grandma could have knitted.

So thank you for your custom, but no thank you. I think I'll choose to buy my clothes from a shop that doesn't make me feel inadequate. Cheers.

They say we should do something everyday that scares us. I don't think this is particularly helpful advice. Eventually people would end up pushing the boundaries of their abilities and throw themselves off cliffs and swim with great white sharks and build jetpacks in order to get their kicks. Which, I'm sure, are all very achieveable in the correct place at the right time, but are not particularly practical if you decide to put a wetsuit on when you're supposed to be heading to a business meeting and as a result get your head bitten off by an angry sea creature.

Nevertheless, courage is something I think we all feel we need to have in some form or another. To use another fishy metaphor (I watched Ocean Giants on Sunday night) southern right whales have bollocks that weigh one tonne. That's a lot of balls. Unfortunately I am neither a whale, nor have bollocks and a result my confidence levels, for the most part, are not very high.

Getting a job helped; I can now behave like a normal human being in a shop. Having had experience seeing how rude people are to shop assistants I feel as though I have a good grasp on how to get them on your side and that it's not a completely insane thing to do if you ask for a little more salt on your chips. That being said, asking me to cut a sausage roll open lengthways and fill it with ketchup is disgusting and you should be ashamed. I digress.

My point is that as a person who keeps getting emails from her university saying SEE YOU IN ONE MONTH, I feel distinctly lacking in confidence. I haven't bought anything. I attempted to make a shopping list but the task was mammoth so I watched Bradley Cooper flashing his eyes about in Limitless instead. Seeing Anne was a bit of a breakthrough I suppose, because if she can go all the way to the other side of the world for six months and come back in one piece then moving three hundred miles away (and remaining in the same country) isn't such a daunting thing. It's still a challenge.

I think I have to start being a little bit more selfish. I am very concious of the fact that I spend a lot of my time worrying about other people. I need to stop, and focus on myself. Be my own best friend. Bilbo Baggins admitted to being selfish, and he lived to 111 and a bit. It worked for him. The tricky thing is it's very hard to change a way of thinking that you've relied on for so long. Especially when you don't know how it's going to pan out. Someone close to me made the good point that surely moving away, where no one knows you, and where presumptions you carry from home can finally bugger off, is something to get excited about rather than fear. She was right, of course. Why carry an albatross squawking negativity on my shoulders when I can pick up a nice snowy owl that doesn't really know me yet, but is ready to find out?

I figure that's the point of university.

That and you know, getting a degree to have job you want.

"Like all of us waiting for the start of the new season [Daniel Craig] was so desperate to see the beautiful game he tuned in to watch the Women's World Cup. And apparently his enthusiasm had nothing to do with the shirt-swapping after 90 minutes."

- Gordon Smart, The Sun, 21/07/11

This from a man who is married to the daughter of Dunfermeline Athletic's director of football. I understand that The Sun is desperately scraping the barrel at the moment, what with their lord and saviour being pied at every chance the public gets, but resorting back to boring old sexism is simply way too predictable. I imagine there were whoops of joy around the office when Rebecca Leighton was arrested. Finally! Something to put on the front page other than pictures of David Beckham holding his baby daughter and people being jumped on by a leopard in India.

Gordon Smart manages to turn a story that could have been positive - Daniel Craig is quoted as saying "It looks great. The standard has gone through the roof. I was watching Japan v Sweden and I thought it was a men's international, it was so fast." - into yet another negative piece on women's football.

His Wikipedia page states that he is still an 'aspiring journalist'. I think we can probably all see why. Grow up, Mr Smart.

It came to my attention yesterday, just as we were taking our seats in Pizza Express, that Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, was a terrible party host. Granted, in The Fellowship of the Ring he obviously takes great care to invite a nice variety of men, elves and dwarves. But whose silly idea was it to sit the Mirkwood elves and the Durin dwarves next to each other? That's only going to end in catastrophe. And then he sat Aragorn and Boromir apart, probably because he knew Boromir was going to be a total nob, but nevertheless - he and Aragorn could have swopped numbers or something or asked each other what their favourite Gondorian football team was. Not a chance thanks to Elrond's bad planning. I suppose it's a miracle at all that Aragorn was there. I don't think he was invited. He just sort of turned up with three little people asking to see Frodo. It's likely that Elrond never invited Aragorn because he's sick of Arwen pining over him all the time.

"Ada, where is Aragorn?"

"Oh deary me sweetie, it turns out he rejected the invite I sent him. I don't think he wants to see you ever again. Now, lets pack a bag you're going to live out of for the rest of time and get you on that boat to the Undying Lands."

He didn't even provide snacks! Not even a little bowl of M&Ms or cheese puffs! What a cop-out. No wonder Sam was so keen to go back home; he'd realised they weren't getting lunch. It was probably tough for Elrond to have friends over. It stems from a bad sleepover with Isildur when they were younger. Isildur had marshamallows and they were about to toast them when Elrond got all bossy and started bellowing "ISILDUR! CAST IT INTO THE FIRE!" Little did he know he'd be repeating those words later on but in a slightly different set of circumstances.

He wasn't invited back.

Mind you, it could be worse. You could have ended up travelling with Merry and Pippin and the Uruk-hai. I notice Pippin didn't even bother asking about second breakfast when he was with them. As we all, I'm sure, remember, the Uruk's "...ain't had nothing but maggoty bread for three stinkin' days!" Given the choice I think I'd rather eat nothing. Then they kill one of their travelling party and eat him so all in all, it is a bit worse than Rivendell's lack of cheese snacks.

Or Moria, where everyone is dead and the Balrog is wandering about thinking about taking old wizards into his pit. Ooer.

I understand the point of YouTube, but frankly I'm never going to be one to sit down and make videos and expect people to watch them etc. I like watching Vloggers but on the whole, I'll never be one. Nevertheless, YouTube is very important because where else would you go to watch cats hugging each other or episodes of Recess or interviews with Bradley Cooper in which he speaks fluent French (hoooo my God!!).

Occasionally a video comes along that is a real gamechanger.

This happened to me today. Storming straight into the list of my favourite YouTube videos of all time, behind Maru, Jurassic Park 'Hey', Cinema 2009, and Nike's 'Write The Future' is this masterpiece:

God knows what'll happen if someone makes me watch this after a few drinks. Watching it today I've already been screaming with hysterical laughter. Tim Berners-Lee would be proud of what we've achieved with his creation.

I like the buttery biscuit base. Peace out.

Ten Things To Look Out For (Spoiler Free As Promised):

1. A Twitter revolution.

2. Oswald freakin' Danes.

3. "Captain Jack Bollocks".

3. Ear muffs.

4. Ramblers.

5. The Severn Bridge meets the CIA.

6. "What if you detatch the head?".

7. Mother/daughter bickering about a diet of lard.

8. An old name is recycled.

9. Someone hurts their arm.

10. A rocket launcher on a Welsh beach.

As a side note, the episode was fantastic. I'm desperate to see episode two but it looks like we'll have to wait until after July 14th, the unconfirmed air date. It had pretty much everything we love about Torchwood (action, dark humour, Captain Jack) plus some new, great characters like Bill Pullman being a crazy, creeper, Lecter-like criminal which is definitley a reason to sit down and check out the show, even if nothing else tempts you. Which, frankly, is unlikely.

Today I was punched in the eye by Laura's cat. Hence the teeny tiny black eye. Granted it was probably my fault for sticking my face right near hers but still. Ouch. The day did not improve from here, it has to be said. Mother, I'd stop reading now. Please.

Penis

Lol haha willy

Lmao big spunky chode

Hmm motorboarding...

This was the point at which I, in bold, realised that I wasn't actually texting Laura, as I'd assumed, I was actually texting my BOSS. This would probably explain my confusion as to how Laura was texting me back whilst still playing LA Noire. Anyway I texted back with this:

Omg! Those were meant for my friend Laura!!! Now I'm embarrassed! Major apologies! x

And I got this in return:

Lol I just found it very funny! It's cool :) xx

Thank God for a good working relationship. I doubt the editor of The Guardian would find it as funny. Yikes.

This post has done nothing to quash the cat lady rumours. Not that there were any...