Glamorama, or how to get a free drink on a Tuesday night in London in December

Even more pampering tonight, pleasantly fuelled by many free cocktails and a bit of retail therapy in between. What could be nicer?

As I mentioned last week, Lotta is the beauty guru and always knows what's going down in the city. So of course she was the one to find out about, and get us on the guest list for, tonight's party/open evening at Bloww, a very hip salon just of Regent Street. So along we trotted for a shuftie, spurred on by the promise of free drinks and, most excitingly, free treatments. No disappointment on either front. Cocktails were liberally supplied in the form of a subtle pear-pomegranite-vodka-martini, very more-ish. Lotta booked in for a manicure and I went for the hair styling.

All good so far. But then my stylist, who had muttered something about not doing "hair-ups", uttered the dreaded words: "hair straighteners".

Now I have a long-standing pact with my hair which has always served me well. I rarely do anything odd to it, I blow-dry as little as possible, and I only wash it when necessary, not daily. In return, it behaves. I certainly don't use hair straighteners, which in my book are pretty much the work of the devil. I mean, all that direct heat can't be good, surely? And if you start shrivelling your hair on a regular basis, surely that makes it frizzy in general, requiring even more straightening? I'd managed to fend off someone selling these tongs of terror in Selfridges the other night with only minimum application of heat to hair, but this guy meant business. I was, of course, far too polite to object.

He set to work, me eyeing him dubiously in the mirror. The ceramic plates sizzled. Steam rose alarmingly from my hair - apparently this was my hair's natural oils, and "nothing to worry about", only happening because he wasn't using heat-protective spray. Um, right. Still, what's a bit of keratin when a stiff upper lip is at stake?

Then he was finished... and here is me with a head full of curls:

I love it! Obviously not something I'll be doing myself, but still great fun, and wonderfully bouncy. Immediately after I'd had my head back for the hairspray, I looked like someone from an 80's pop video in front of a wind machine. It is a bit terrifying though, normally any curls in my hair from rollers etc drop out within about half an hour, whereas these are still going strong now, nearly six hours later. That just goes to show how harsh this was, I suppose. I think I will need some hard-core deep conditioning treatment sometime soon.

All glammed up, we headed on to Liberty's for one of their cardholder discount and drinks evenings. Here the cocktails were a perky gin-apple juice-cinnamon gomme long drink, interesting but possibly not something you'd want more than one of (we moved onto the wine later). These things are so terribly civilised - Christmas shopping late in the evening without the hoards, a cloakroom for bags, free drinks, mince pies and of course lots of money off. Perfect for stocking up on gifts. Remarkably I was quite restrained in the yarn department, only buying a couple of balls of Rowan Pure Wool Aran in a dark purple, as requested by my friend Cathy for a birthday scarf (for the very end of December, I have time). Mind you, we last saw Ting headed back in there for a second assault...

I could seriously get used to this sort of thing.