Norwich shop 'til you drop ...

I finished a 22 minute transcript this morning quite quickly, even though it still needs a bit of editing, I don't have to upload it to my 'employer' until tomorrow, so plenty of time and what to do?   The kids were very quiet after mum left for work but I have learnt to understand that silence actually means nothing and in less than a couple of minutes perfect happy silence can descend into madness, screaming and violence.  It's a lovely day but I don't like the idea of driving too far from home at this point by myself with the kids, so decided that we should rather take the bus and go into Norwich for a spot of shopping (Oh what joy for the kiddies ... not)

 We left the house at about quarter to 11, which was a bit early to get the Simmonds bus that was parked down the road from our house, so we walked to the main road and a few minutes later along cam the Purple line bus. The return bus fare for us three on the Purple line is £4.50, which really isn't bad at all - it's about 25 mins into town.   We sat at the front up top - much to the kids' amusement. 

Norwich was packed.  I can't figure this town actually, it's always busy - I don't think I've ever been into the centre of Norwich and had a quiet time.  Yes, I know it's school holidays but actually the crowds of people that I saw mostly were adults and pensionable adults at that.  There weren't that many school children walking around at all.   We wandered around for quite a while trying to find somewhere where we could hunker down and have a snack because we were all a bit hungry by 11.30 ish.  Eventually ended up in Castle Mall at the Burger King, definitely not on the plan but what the heck, it is cheap, the food's not too bad and there are plenty of places to sit in the cool airconditioned area set aside for the patrons.   The kids had the kiddie cheese burger, chips, orange juice and I had a chicken long bun with salad on and chips, also with orange juice - altogether it was just over £11

Still can't get used to the idea that almost every 'restaurant' / 'eating establishment' in the UK is serve yourself.  But it wasn't an unpleasant experience and at least the kids ate their food and seemed to enjoy it. 

After the nosh up, we wandered around looking for Primark, went inside and immediately I realised how much i absolutely abhor this shop with a passion.  It's like Pep/Jet/Ackermans all rolled into one, stinking of plastic and rubber, hot as hell, packed with people, no space to move and things all over the place.  They also never have any shoes for Faye (which is why I went in there in the first place) ... I reckon, that according to my tried and tested customer service satisfaction spot check analysis thing,  that you can measure a department store or shop's attitude towards its paying customers by the ease (or lack thereof) of movement between the different areas of the shop.    When I see a shop that has an escalator going up but bloody reams and reams of stairs to climb down on the way out, I can basically make the assumption that, well, management just don't give a rat's arse about you once they've fleeced you of your hard earned cash.  They'll whisk you away up into the heavens of the shop on a shiny escalator (magic carpet) but once you've paid, then eff off and make your own way outta our shop. And this is the exact attitude that prevails in Primark, I think it's the worst bloody shop in the UK.  No airconditioning, stuff piled all over the place, no coherence, no room between aisles ... awful cheap (not really) and tacky place.  Rant over (for a while). 

We hot-footed it out of there as fast as I could drag Ewan through the double swing doors (not automated mark, they are the standard push the door until you break your shoulder type things) ... he was devastated that I hadn't stopped for him to look at the Spiderman clothes.

We moved along the road and ended up barging into Debenhams - again, not my favourite department store in the UK but at least it's air-conditioned and you can more or less find stuff that you want.  Debenham's isn't cheap, it's like the John Orrs of old, or maybe modern day Stuttaford's ... but they do have the odd bargain and we were at least able to find some pretty shoes for Faye - bright sparkly silver Dorothy pumps.  Of course, they cannily park the Toy section right next to the girlies' shoes, so again Nana got conned out of some more dosh and ended up buying Ewan more TreeFu Tom shite.  Well it keeps him happy. 

I splurged when we were wandering through Castle Mall (where we had lunch) and bought myself some Hugo Femme perfume - cos mine (that I brought with me from the UK) ran out a few months ago and it's too long to wait until my birthday (hint hint).   I love Hugo Boss perfume but I sprayed some of the new one that StickPerson Gwyneth Paltrow is promoting (in the white bottle) and it doesn't actually have much of a scent at all, not typically Hugo).   Anyway, I'm happy I got some perfume.   

Wandered back to the bus-stop and about five minutes later along came a Purple line and we got on - again managed to get front seats looking out at the top.  

Missy zonked out from too much sparkly shoe shopping

Here's a little vid of the kiddies playing after we got home ...  

He's almost got the whole set of TreeFuTom things ...

Ball Dome I got for him last week. 

Post-Script.. 
Forgot to post an update on the art projects for this week.
We used more recycled thingies to make art ... Faye and I came up with the idea of using some silver foil pie dishes for the skirts of our Mermaids ... bits of metallic foil pom pom strands for their hair.  She has it on her wall now, next to the butterflies, which were made from the plastic of 2ltr milk bottles.