How to stop shopping (so badly)

"Party season" beckons and the siren calls to shop are starting - stay strong! Nine fail-safe rules to dress yourself - year round - without losing your mind or wallet

Thank God. For as the festive season approaches, peace on earth has returned to a corner of south London at least: Marks & Spencer is finally reopening its Brixton shop after extensive refurbishment and I CAN EAT AGAIN. Once more I can buy lemon flavoured breakfast pancakes, the world’s best Picky Bits for a piece-it-together lunch, and ready meals that are actually edible (a foray into Tesco’s range was a horrible, desperate revelation and never again).

Without it (a sign in the window told us all to go to Marble Arch for the nearest branch, a cruel joke - I haven’t been there in 15 years, who has? Whizzing past it as your taxi plays chicken down a multi-lane highway does not count), I have been surviving on the weird combo of Tesco Express and Co-op (In)convenience shops, that pop up in pairs everywhere you go, with terrifyingly inflated prices. No more.

I do want to write one day about what it’s like to live in an area that is famously gentrifying and to be part of the problem to som…