Four days spent in bed with flu over the weekend has meant that I have not had to break my shopping ban.

Last Friday night I had a coveted pair of tickets for the Jimmy Choo at H&M launch. I have had the tickets safely stowed on my bedside table for the last month. My best friend and I had been planning our weekend of fun in London (where she lives) for weeks. It was to be two fun-packed girly days of shopping, galleries, liquid lunches and cocktails. But alas, it was not to be as last Wednesday I was struck down with the dreaded lurgy. Not quite Swine Flu but it certainly didn't like me.

The one bonus to having to miss the Jimmy Choo night was that I bought nothing and therefore did not have to bend the rules of my shopping ban at all. I have, however, had to endure seeing all the pictures of the beautiful things I might have been able to buy had I been there. Most upsetting.

This week though, clothes and (Jimmy Choo) shoes have been replaced with my new photography addiction! In the absence of pretty new things I found myself ordering films, paper, lenses, cleaning brushes. Photography has become my new obsession in recent months. It has also become my "very valid" excuse for purchasing numerous fashion magazines in the name of research. Carrie Bradshaw, in Sex

and the City, tells us, "When I first moved to New York and I was totally broke, sometimes I would buy Vogue instead of dinner. I felt it fed me more." Now the photos of beautiful clothes in Vogue have become my substitutes for the real thing! I could sit there for hours staring at their beauty and still not tire of it! And it's not just Vogue, the floor beside my bed is currently home to Elle, Grazia (this week's and last!) and Lula.

I'd better get back to my sick bed and all that reading!