When is a Failure NOT a Failure?

I have this budget, see?  I know what I’m allowed to spend and when I’m allowed to spend it, and on the whole, I feel pretty good about this.  I have a little bit of breathing space built in, so I don’t have to feel too guilty if I edge over the budget.

However, last week I blew it entirely, and it’s pretty difficult to feel guilty about it, too.

Last week I met my Waterloo in the form of my local Waterstones Bookshop.  We went in with the intention of buying a novel for my son, who had missed out on buying this book at an author signing at his school.  I felt bad for him (he missed out because he was keeping a prior commitment with a teacher, but it turned out that the teacher had skipped the commitment because of wanting to go to the book signing, too!) so I promised to get him the book.  There was room within his school budget for this, so off we went.

However, I didn’t bargain with my daughter demanding a book too.  Well, fair enough, her brother was getting something, only fair that she get something too.  Whilst I was chaperoning them around the large and tempting children’s book department, my husband disappeared, only to be found by the detective novels, right next to a new hardback release by my favourite author.  Argh!!!!  I must have picked it up and put it down at least five times.  Whilst I was facing temptation in the crime fiction section, my husband was facing his own budgetary doom in the Self-Help department.  Double Argh!  Needless to say, he didn’t linger in the personal finance section, but got suckered into “In Praise of Slow” by Carl Honore and a book on meditation (my husband REALLY needs to slow down a bit!).

To cut a long story short, we bought everything because my “money spend on a book is well spent” gland kicked in.

And you know what?  I don’t feel very guilty at ALL, because the books are all FABULOUS!!!!

Oh dear …