Tuesday, 22 December 2015

Shopping and Collecting Alice and Jess

The plan today was to spend the morning shopping and after lunch to go over to Windsor to collect Alice and Jess, ready for tomorrow's trip into London. This was pretty much what happened!

We called first at B and M for a new hosepipe. Alas, this is not a gardening season and head office have decreed that items such as hoses have to be put away in favour of the huge pile of Christmas-related tat! When we asked one of the staff he was somewhat put out as he has had quite  number of people asking the same question as ours! Must be something to do with the unseasonable warm weather

Most of what we wanted to get was found at Morrisons. Whilst Christine made a start, Mike went across the road to try again for a hosepipe only to discover that Wilko is equally focussed on one department and no hosepipes!

After finding all the items we wanted (except for a new washing up brush! Also unseasonable?) we returned to the boat. By now it was close to lunch.

Google told us that there is a garden centre near the point at which we join the M4 so we set off early to see if they - just by some chance - still have hosepipes in stock. As we turned into the car park we saw that there is a hand car wash so we left the car in their care whilst we looked around inside. (The car was quite a mess - the drive up did not clean it much but the real problem was Mike's near disaster encounter with SatNav oddities that took him down a forest track on the Boconnoc estate en route to a concert a few days ago)

Although the appropriate department had been somewhat overwhelmed by Christmas goods, we eventually found what we were seeking! With only a few days to go, it seems likely that a large quantity of cheap decorations will soon have to go back into store with the hope that more can be offloaded next year.

It was a little early for our Windsor date when we collected the car - now gleaming - but a quick call established that an early arrival would be OK.

After a cup of tea, we packed the to girls and their luggage into the car, along with some logs to help keep them warm on the boat. They both brought along their instruments - Alice is really doing well now. A few days ago she took Grade 1 although not yet had the result. She has quite got the hang of how to interpret the symbols on the page. Jess has just started on the ukulele and mastered several chords already.

We called at Tesco on the way back - the main reason was to pick up some olives which the two girls enjoy and suggested that they would be an essential component of the individual personally-assembled pizzas.


Back at the boat we were treated to a concert from Alice whilst Jess did much of the making of cheese straws and then the pizzas.

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