Little Emily (neibling) is four on Saturday, so I went looking for a cool t-shirt or somesuch (having had great success in that area previously with the amazing owl dress) but there's an aggravating preponderence of meaningless slogans ("maximum volume system"?) and character properties, perhaps precipitated by the collapse of the Disney store, bah. Upstairs at Debenhams I found the amazing velcro dinosaur tops of glory, only to reject them. The dinosaurs were inaccurate, violent and on ghastly earth tones. She's mad about dinosaurs, but not mad enough to wear something that ugly. Next was doing a little better, but she's a bit too young for the new rave look. Like M&S, they're also selling tiny t's with environmental messages. Maybe I'll try M&S later. I picked up a couple of decent t's for Tim and me there. Yes, the kid's department. How else do grown-ups get comic book t-shirts that aren't printed on voluminous black sacks or babydoll shortie pinkies?

In the meantime, charlottecooper has inspired me to nick most of her most recent post to make a back-to-school poll. Feel free to elaborate in comments if you have too much bile (or bliss!) to fit into the boxes.