Merry Christmas

This one is aimed directly at Weasel.

Frau Random Doubt, the wee Hen and I went 'up the city' on Thursday to do a spot of lastish minute Christmas shopping. I was dreading it.

The first day of the school holidays? The city? parking? driving? crowds? working class people?

The mere prospect of a day (or a significant part of a day) spent hauling around Norwich filled me with anguish. Can't we just do all this online?

"No", said FRD. "We need to get some specific things right now".

So off we went.

Parking was much easier than I had anticipated. Ummm.

There seemed to be fewer people about. Great.

One of the specific things we needed to get was a small football for Balfour. For some reason this had proved problematic (in a country clinically obsessed with footy it was difficult to get just the right type of ball). I had pondered this and decided upon hitting the city and finding a cheesy sports store. My words "I'll get the lad the ball he wants or I'm no uncle and we shall never celebrate Christmas again!!"

We take the lift in the slightly swanky department store to the wrong floor. Bugger. But there, as the lift doors part, there it was. A fantastic, reasonably priced mini football of exactly the type Balfour's parents had suggested.

We knew it was going to be a better than average day.

While FRD went into the worst mall in the world I took the wee Hen to the local museum to buy a museum pass (free entry to about half the museums in the county for a year!) The museum was a blissfull oasis of calm and tea. we spent an hour, looking at watercolours and stuffed polar bears. It was a truly rarefied moment, and the baby changing room was very good.

This day is actually becoming enjoyable.

With great ease we found and purchased gifts for my impossible to buy for mother.

Unheard of. Other family members still do not believe this bit.

Then, with our shopping done, the weather gorgeous and not many crowds we spent a couple of hours strolling. yes, strolling the streets looking in windows and having a delightful time.

I even introduced FRD to the great childhood game of 'Go into the old fashioned hardware store via it's entrance on this street and navigate your way through old fashioned hardware store's three floors of brushes and plumbing supplies until you re emerge from it's other entrance on the other street'. She loved it!

Weasel, the picture is for you, a Norwich institution and still feeding the masses as it did when we were lads!