RIGHT now, while you read this column, a man is sat in a self-imposed pit of crippling metaphysical convulsion, nausea, exhaustion, dissonance, sweating, discord, hunger, thirst... and quite possibly with a sore head too.

That man is I. Dry January is over and I’ll never do it again — but I did it and I can say that I did it and thank science it’s over and hello hangover, my old friend.

Ditching the sauce for a month has at least saved me a bit of coin which is nice so I took the old lady on a day trip to Reading last weekend for a bit of retail therapy.

We hadn’t included any records on our shopping list but somehow, unbelievably, I did end up in a record store — The Sound Machine in the Harris Shopping Arcade (purely by chance actually, it’s just opposite a quality little beer shop where I bagged some lovely Belgian lambics for the breaking of the fast).

If you collect 60s/70s rock or you like quite traditional jazz and blues then it’s worth a visit. Not for me though, they were very apologetic when I asked about Afro/Latin.

The real revelation from Saturday’s jolly down the M4 was in The Oracle. They’ve got a three floor Zara and it was like a Divine Comedy reboot, with Dante’s original nine concentric circles of hell condensed down to just three cubes of polished concrete, jammed with cut price clothes and frantic women.

Heather spent nearly two hours in that Latin consumer inferno and I was damn proud of her — she scoured the rails and got some super nice garms at bargain prices.

I now realise that shopping for clothes in Zara is actually a lot like digging for records. You spend hours sifting through crap but with perseverance comes treasure.

The whole ordeal has really strengthened our bond and I’ll keep it in mind next time I suggest a quick browse on Berwick Street or amongst the local chazzers. Thanks, Pumpkin.