Fashion: Dress sense

Something has happened to me since I moved, five years ago, from the middle of Camden, north London, to the middle of a field in Norfolk. I have, of course, thrown out my all-black wardrobe in favour of some fetching shades of brown, but I seem also to have metamorphosed into a mail-order junkie.

I blame my mother. From the moment that my husband and I said we really were giving up our town house for a crumbling, kitchenless pile with blocked gutters, she insisted that we invest in a very large chest freezer and start immediately (that is, in September) to stock up for the inevitable biting winter months ahead. I had already been cruelly wrenched away from 24-hour emergency supplies of sun-dried tomatoes and on-tap ciabatta, and felt that I was adjusting well to a life of rural denial. But she was busy sowing the seeds of anxiety.

It was no good pointing out that the supermarket was only three miles away - my mother was convinced that we'd be holed-up until Easter, and I started to develop a siege mentality. At this point my mail-order obsession found fertile soil. It soon spread like bindweed.

The compulsion began innocently enough. A Boden catalogue arrived in the post (sent to some previous besieged occupant) and I felt my first twinge. I'd never experienced the need for moleskin jeans before, but instinctively I knew that they were country essentials which could see me into old age. Even better, someone else would have to battle through blizzards and floods that I might have them. And there's another thing - parcels mean postman and postman means some form of human contact.

My husband saw it coming. At first, he found it amusing that I was actually contemplating sheepskin houseboots and mittens that turn into gloves from the Innovations handbook. It became a dinner-party joke - my why-has-no-one-thought-of-it-before? gizmo habit: shoe shelves which hang from doors, waistband stretchers and stick-on lipstick mirrors. But it's been half a decade now and there is no sign of my passion abating. I tell myself that by buying from mail- order catalogues I'm saving time and money; that I'm giving to worthy causes (well, sometimes - I have my eye on some Oxfam slipper socks made by Afghan refugees); and that I find real gems which aren't available in shops. I don't know of anywhere other than the Beauty Quest catalogue where it's possible to find eyebrow-styling gel. !