"I'm being blinded," she cried. "Someone get me some sunglasses!"
   "Very funny," I snarled as I looked out on my balcony and the single, pale, quivering glimmer of light in the left corner.

I'd been in Kmart when I was seized by a burst of optimism and enthusiasm, a combination which has been responsible for any number of disasters in my life. Last week it was shirts and the irrational urge to buy some as I wandered through Indooroopilly Shoppingtown. "How do they look?" I asked the shop assistant, forgetting that shop assistants have but one answer to any such question, this being: "You look great in that."

Ask them the time and they'll tell you you look great in that. Ask if they are aware that the back of the store is ablaze and they will reply: "Absolutely. You look great in that."

This problem is compounded by mirrors in department store dressing rooms being made from different materials to those in your home. This is why clothes that appear to fit perfectly and flatter you in the shop seem to have been made for somebody else when you try them on in your bedroom.

When I got home the shirts seemed a size too small, with pink, hairy bits of me poking through the gaps between the buttons and the sleeves ending halfway between elbow and wrist. "Hmmm," I thought, regarding the two-legged bean bag that stared back at me from the mirror. "Perhaps I should have taken a little more time choosing these. If I don't eat for a month, they'll fit perfectly."

A few days later I was once more in Kmart when, for reasons I still don't understand, a sign advertising solar-powered porch lights triggered the "buy now!" instinct in my brain. We would be the envy of our apartment block, those living on the floors above gazing down in admiration on Willems & Leenstra's illuminated balcony display.

   "I'll take these," I said, grabbing an armful of lights. "Are you sure they'll work?" I asked the shop assistant. This elicited the garden-shop version of the "you look great in that" reply.
   "I've got them in my own garden," she said.

This was all I needed to hear so I handed over a fistful of funds, hurried home, placed the lights around the balcony and awaited nightfall.

Later that evening, my fiancée and I stood and waited together for the solar-powered light display that would embrace us both in its warm glow.

"That's great, Marc," she said as a lone light flickered and then died. "But I've had as much excitement as I can take for one night. I'm going to watch TV."

I went shopping again the next day only to kick the lights across the balcony, gashing my shin as I did so. Bleeding slightly, I found myself signing up for a wooden floor. No matter that we already had carpeted floors, albeit ones that are slowly succumbing to nightly assaults of tomato sauce spillage. I keep telling myself that our quality of life will improve when the wooden floor arrives.

I'll go to bed earlier because when I fall asleep on the lounge watching TV and fall onto the floor, instead of snoring into the carpet I'll wake up. I'll probably have a slight concussion but at least I'll be awake. We won't have to vacuum any more and the tomato sauce stains won't show. I imagine that every six months or so, the floor will have to be "desauced". I must ask the floor man how to do this.