A date with Sarah-Kate; Kate’s home truths

Sarah-Kate won’t be fobbed off by a big old mess

Compared to a lot of people, I’m not much of a shopper. I visit a small handful of stores once or twice a year and that’s it. Even buying online fails to excite me. It’s not just that I need instant gratification – it’s that spending your hard-earned cash should be an experience that does more for the soul than pressing “enter” on a screen.

I remember many moons ago the Ginger took me to a very posh shop to buy a handbag for a significant birthday. We were shown to a special room and given a glass of champagne! I’m sure if I’d asked someone to clean my shoes and brush my hair they would have obliged.

Obviously, the experience came at a price and I’ve certainly never been back, but here’s the thing – I cherish the memory and I cherish the bag which, 15 years later, is still going strong.

It’s possibly no surprise that as a writer, I like everything I own to have a story.

I’m like that with jewellery too. I don’t have a lot but each piece is meaningful. There’s the turquoise necklace my aunt Nance gave me for my 21st, which she had been given for her 21st.

I have the pearls I bought in China on a press trip in the ’90s, a paua-shell necklace the Ginger gave me for my 35th birthday, and a beautiful cameo he had made featuring the profile of our darling dog Ted.

I treasure a silver Vesta box from Mum, an ebony pendant I bought in Niue last year and an old piece I bought from a very handsome jeweller when I was on holiday in Ireland with a friend who has since passed away.

In fact, necklaces are my thing. I have the world’s smallest earlobes so can’t do much with earrings and I spend too much time clomping away on a keyboard to have any time for bracelets.

And I would have thought my necklace collection complete until I started seeing photos of actress Kristen Stewart wearing what looked like a double-looped fob chain around her neck.

I loved this look so much, I set about buying something similar. But a visit to a mall left me cold. While I was always treated well, I couldn’t find a story to go with my prospective purchase.

Then, one day, I passed a little antique shop. Inside was a tall, slender woman in her 70s wearing a turban on her head and around her neck an amber pendant the size of a dinner plate with a tassel dangling below it. Catnip to a person like moi!

Minutes later, we were chatting ninety to the dozen as we pored over antique fobs, my new friend attaching them to different chains to find one that suited. When I told her I wanted to wear the fob together with my Vesta box and my Irish pendant, she clapped her hands in delight.

“That’s called a ‘neck mess’,” she cried. “I love a neck mess.”

Now I love a neck mess too. And that is what I call shopping.