I can resist anything except temptation... and a juicy money off voucher from Boden.

The weather is turning and I've been thinking about key pieces for my autumn wardrobe.

This probably sounds incredibly poncey, but I do have good reason for this: all of my autumn and winter clothing is locked up in a storage unit in Plymouth and I'm... not. It's not like I have no autumn clothing, given that jeans and shirts can be worn all year round with relative impunity, but I am a bit lacking in the jacket department. Even so, I was going to resist the temptation to click on the Boden website again as there wasn't much in the autumn collection I fancied apart from the ridiculous frog green patent moccasins and a moss green cord jacket with elbow patches. I decided I would have the shoes, but the jacket was just too pricey and a bit too fusty and academic looking (or at least, that's what I tried to tell myself in order to convince myself that I didn't want it really...), so I wouldn't have that. It was going so well until they sent me a nice juicy voucher to thank me for taking part in their customer panel that could be used in conjunction with the current money off promotion. When they do that, I am powerless to resist.

I also decided that I needed some more shoes, even though I don't really. The thing is, a corduroy jacket with elbow patches needs to be complimented with a nice pair of tan brogues. Fortunately, one of my colleagues pointed me to www.katekanzier.com and there was a perfect pair that were very reasonably priced. I hope they come with a shoe bag. I'm very keen on shoe bags - they stop them from getting separated and knocked about in the wardobe. They're less necessary when the shoes aren't made of suede or patent, but even so, I like them.

And the best thing is I cocked up my diary and I don't have a driving lesson this weekend, and as a result of the driving lesson I don't have, I also missed a night out tonight... and the combined money I would have spent on the two things will cover the cost of the shoes and the jacket. I think this may be the female equivalent of 'man maths'.

I do worry, though, that buying a Triumph Herald was the beginning of an inexorable slide down a path that also involves elbow patches and brogues, and that it will ultimately involve adenoids and a beard. I've had my adenoids surgically removed, but it had to be done twice because the first time the surgeon didn't do a thorough enough job and they grew back. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they exhibited sufficient persistence to regenerate. If you ever catch me supping a pint of brown twiggy beer while lamenting the state of my track rod ends in a disturbingly nasal whine, please shoot me. The beard is admittedly less likely, but given that I have a Caster Semanaya-like excess of testosterone (due in my case to PCOS, not a suspected case of hermaphrodism), it isn't beyond the realms of possibility...

It's not like I bought Gerald because I have a desperate desire to wander around muddy rugby fields in an anorak discussing the failings of the V8 in the Triumph Stag (which are easily remedied by replacing it with the Rover one that was its contemporary, though of course this means sacrificing originality, which reduces the value of the car as a collector's piece but improves it as a driver's car...), and yet I somehow seem to have already obtained membership to the Triumph Sports Six Club and (if Gerald is back on the road by then) I'm driving to Duxford on 4th October for the TSSC All Triumph Day. And of course, I have leather driving gloves, which - personal foibles aside - is a bit of a cardinal sin, really.

I have this romantic image in my head of driving through country lanes on a lovely summer Sunday, my hair flowing in the breeze and my breasts swelling magnificently over the neckline of a beautiful, slightly hippyish, dress, the very epitome of an attractive young woman in a car that is a study in entropy. However, this can never be - I'm plain and plump, rapidly approaching middle age and evidently I'm about as feminine as Brian Blessed. I've had my car for two weeks and I've phoned the garage three times to ask them to do extra jobs to halt the effects of time on Gerald's bits and pieces. In my mind's eye, I'm an amalgam of Emma Peel and all the girls from the Flake adverts of the late 70s and early 80s (especially the one painting the field of poppies, except her painting gets rained on so she turns it sideways instead); in reality I'm a boring, tweedy bloke trapped in a woman's body, which explains how I got to be so generously proportioned, if nothing else.

But shh... nobody seems to have noticed yet.

``