This is my dress of the summer.

I’m not even kidding; this dress has been with everywhere. It’s been to lunch in the best Turkish restaurant in Green Lanes, to dinner at Brasserie Zedel, to Hampstead Heath, to Julie Cohen’s book launch, and to see Josie Long at the Battersea Arts Centre as well as numerous barbecues and parties. It basically has a better social life than I do.

I have never bought anything from Boden before but they seem to have got my address through some devil’s bargain with John Lewis, and I’m at home a lot with their catalogues, so what can you do. I have worn this dress every week since I got it, and sometimes (ahem) more than once a week. Fine, more than once a weekend. It is actually not the most flattering shape on me – for years I bought A-line skirts because I thought they were meant to be the most flattering, before I realised they tend to bulk me out. But I don’t care: it makes me feel like I’m driving along the French Riviera in 1956 with the roof down and a silk scarf on. I love the aqua colours and the pink details. In fact I love it so much that I’m not even too bitter that it is now reduced to £35.60 and I paid £89.00 for it. Sigh.

There is also a matching skirt – now reduced to the strange price of £20.70 – but don’t think I need that though it is very pretty. Instead I have my eye on another dress in a very similar print and an even more flattering shape.

I am watching it hawklike to see if it goes in the sale. Of course the only way to make sure it goes in the sale would be for me to buy it at full price. But I’m not gonna. Basically Boden and I are waiting to see who cracks first. It won’t be me, Boden! 

At least probably not.