Last week I bought a pair of glove-soft dark brown ankle boots of positively fetishistic beauty for

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Last week I bought a pair of glove-soft dark brown ankle boots of positively fetishistic beauty for less than I might have paid for brand-new but much inferior boots.Third, I have discovered that - as when trying to eat or drink less - it is essential never to go near temptation. Where, this time last year, I might have spent £80 in the sales on a silk shirt, reduced from £190, I now find myself spending £50 on one reduced from £80 I have become much more price- and value-conscious. The first is that, contrary to expectations, I have not saved any money. Essential expenditure soon fills the gap vacated by non-essential spending and a new fosse septique for the cottage, a new boiler for ourkitchen in London, and the need to save for new oak flooring soon used up any theoretical "savings" from the months of abstinence.Second, although spending money again, I am doing so at a much lower price level. Failure to keep my resolution is now complete.A number of interesting discoveries remain. Having broken my resolution once, the wall of my will was breached, my discipline weakened, and the one small exception was soon followed bybigger ones.Christmas was my undoing. I had intended to buy token presents only, but found it impossible.

My son needed so many items to furnish his new flat, and it was such a pleasure to buy him a few necessary odds and ends The January sales completed my downfall. Dangerous words.) The shoes cost a mere 168 francs (about £20) Reader, I bought them! I carried them home and gloated. They gave me more pleasure than any shoes bought in the past 20 years.The French have a saying, more usually applied to adultery, "c'est le premier pas qui coute" How right they are. There, shopping for food in Sarlat market one autumnal Saturday morning, I saw in a shoe shop the very pair of flat shoes I needed for the winter.

(A friend, hearing of my no-spend policy, had said "Ah, but there's a difference between buying and replacing!". On holiday last year I made do with the same clothes I had worn on holiday in 1993; needless to relate, nobody noticed. I paid off my accounts at the two department stores where I have credit and stuck on the side of the fridge their final bills with the magic words: "amount due: £00.00". In October we went to France for five weeks so that my partner could continue the eternal task of pointing the old stone walls of our cottage and I could start on my next novel. Buoyed up by a sense of virtue, it is not hard to resist the blandishments of catalogues, sales and special offers I avoided department stores, I boycotted sales. Today's date is some weeks short of the full year, but since this is likely to be my final column, it is my last chance to say how I got on.