It’s not hard, people, alls I want is a good button-down shirt for going to work in. My one continuous week of employment made it clear to me that my businesswear collection is somewhat lacking. Friday I figured I couldn’t recycle the smart black skirt anymore that week, so I crossed my fingers and wore jeans to the office—the only pair of jeans I own, scuffed and torn at the heels from my shuffling about in my red Converse sneaks.

But, so. The shirts. I mean, you think, how hard can it be? People work, I hear. And they have to get dressed for it somehow. All I want is, I dunno, a white shirt with a fine graph-paper-grid print in orange, to go under a fitted red sweater. Or a white shirt with small blue embroidered polka dots to go under a deep pink cardigan. Or a blue shirt with white embroidered polka dots to go under a green cardigan. You think these are achievable goals. You think wrong. I went south and west and east again, and all I found was one pyjama-striped shirt after another, each in a blue so inoffensive it was almost, itself, somnolent.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t know where to go. If I were in New York, I’d go to Anthropologie and J. Crew. If I were in Sydney, I’d go to Veronika Maine. If I were in Singapore, well, I wouldn’t fit into anything in Singapore anyway, so I’d just go to Ya Kun Kaya Toast and get a snack. Today I thought the Gap would save me, but no. I went into two, even—bought something in the first one, and returned it in the second. Let’s everybody hope that my walking around town all day at least made up for my not going to the gym.

OH BUT WAIT LISTEN

Forget the shirts. We don’t give a shit about the shirts. The thing is, I’d gone into this schmancy kitchen-things shop on the schmancy Marylebone High Street to get some paper petit-four cases for the pineapple tarts I’m making this weekend, and I was waiting at the till to pay, but the staff were all busy wrapping up some massive order for someone, stacks of casseroles and knives and bowls, and I was holding my petit-four cases in one hand and a five-pound note in the other, and I was thinking maybe I could just leave my money on the counter and say “Ta” when the someone came by and the someone was Jamie Oliver, looking exactly like he does on TV and everything. And Jamie Oliver in the flesh is one thing, but also, he had, tucked under one arm, the very same salad spinner I’d just bought. That’s right, me and Jamie Oliver, spinnin’ salads.

I called Hens, of course, once I got out of the shop, and she said, “Was everyone in the store in a flurry?” “Please,” I said, “of course, no—we were all really relaxed. I mean, come on, I was trained in New York, y’know, Jamie Oliver, please, who cares.” “But,” I said, “I tell you lah, all I have done is leave the store and cross the street and now I am standing opposite watching the exit for when he comes out.”

She wanted to know if he’d asked what I was going to be baking, and I said, “Ya! I really wanted him to, then he would have been all enchanted by the idea of this family recipe, Chinese New Year and all, and then of course he’d have invited me on his show...but he didn’t.” “You should have tapped him on the shoulder,” she said, “and asked, ‘Aren’t you curious?’”

Clearly.

But the thing is, I wouldn’t have had any clothes for the shoot.