The Saga of the H&M skirt

First of all, I have to ask you to please excuse the state of my hair in these photos. One of the fun (by which I mean “not even remotely fun” ) things about living in Scotland is that even when it’s sunny and warm out, there’s almost always a stiff breeze, too. Where we live, it’s windy almost all the time, so no matter how carefully I style my hair, the second I step out of the door I may as well not have bothered. I refuse to complain about it (on this occasion, anyway), though, because YAY, SPRING! Do you SEE that blue sky, people? Seriously, it can be as windy as it wants, if it just stays sunny…

With that out of the way: remember my yellow H&M skirt, which I love beyond reason? This is its twin. This skirt did not come into my possession willingly, though. Oh no. In fact, buying this skirt felt a bit like one of those quests that knights of yore might have to undertake in order to win their lady, except in this case the “knight” was me and the “lady” was an H&M skirt. I KNOW, people. I know.

It should all have been so easy, too. I mean, I ordered the skirt the second it appeared on the H&M website. I wear the yellow one to death, and I thought the white one would be perfect for summer, so I didn’t even bother with my usual “waiting until it goes out of stock” trick. Nope, that skirt was in my basket within seconds of me laying eyes on it, and then, a few minutes later it was joined by a couple of other little basics, like, for instance, a pair of knickers. Well, they were there, I was placing an order anyway…

“This skirt will be my new favourite thing!” I told Rubin, who is the only person who will listen to me most of the time. “It’ll go with every single pair of shoes I own! AND every single top!” And then I sat back to await the arrival of my prechus skirt.

Well, I waited. And I waited. Then I waited a little more. Eventually it occurred to me that rather than doing all the waiting, I should maybe log into my H&M account and see if there was some kind of problem which was causing the delay. So I did. And there was. The problem was the knickers. You see, not long after I added them to my order they’d gone out of stock, and now H&M, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to put a hold on my order while they ran up some new ones.

The skirt, meanwhile, had sold out. I mean, OF COURSE it had.

“Well… that’s OK,” I said doubtfully. “I placed my order BEFORE it sold out, so obviously H&M will have reserved one for me.”

Yeah, dream on, Amber. A few days later my parcel arrived. It contained one pair of knickers, and… that was it. JUST the knickers. No skirt. “Sorry!” said the cheerful little note inside the parcel, “But you didn’t seriously think we’d make this easy on you, did you? Enjoy your new knickers! Also your endless search for that skirt you’ve based your entire summer wardrobe around!”

Well. At this point, a more sensible woman would have simply given up, and accepted that it just wasn’t meant to be between her and the skirt. I may be many things, however, but I am not a sensible woman, so instead, I decided to dedicate my life to refreshing the H&M website, in the hope that the skirt would come back into stock. And eventually it did… two sizes larger than the one I needed. Then one size larger than the one I needed. Then finally, FINALLY… someone returned one in my size, and my quest was over.

The lesson? It pays to be persistent. Also to be a little bit crazy.

My shoes, meanwhile, were a gift from the very kind people at MyVoucherCodes.co.uk , and I just couldn’t resist pairing them with a matching mint green sweater, even although I know my fashion blogger card will probably be revoked for such shameless matchy-matchiness. These are almost sold-out at Office, and I’d loved them from the moment I saw them, so I was very grateful to MyVoucherCodes for stepping in and saving me from ANOTHER endless quest: I just don’t think I could’ve gone through another one so soon.

Mind you, I DID get a pair knickers out of the whole “skirt” situation, so every cloud, people, every cloud…