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Surviving The Season
We went to Watford the other day. Watford town centre is one-way-system retail park hell. I don't want to ever go back there again. The alternative was Brent Cross on the first day of the sales. I think in future I'd rather go with the devil I know.
Brent Cross was today, and from the look of the traffic queues, it wasn't going to be much fun. In the end, we parked easily, just had to wait ages for lifts, and battle through pretty packed crowds. The one good thing about the John Lewis baby department, though, is that it's the one bit of the store that is totally non-seasonal. You either need baby stuff, or you don't, regardless of the time of year. So it was the quietest bit of the whole shopping centre.
Babies are expensive. Okay, let me rephrase that. The stuff you need to buy for a first baby is expensive. Naturally, as long as you keep a reasonable gap between children (we intend to) and avoid multiple births (we kind of hope we do, at least this first one is just the one) these expenses can disappear almost completely for numbers 2, 3, etc. The same stuff is recycled for the most part. Clothes, furniture, equipment, and the like. It also means I've now got a definite deadline for clearing out the spare bedroom: January 4th, by 15:00, which is when the cot and dresser/changing table are getting delivered.
I like deadlines; they concentrate the mind. I have a feeling this is why I haven't picked a name yet. There isn't a real deadline, only a vague one. If I knew Baby would be arriving at precisely 07:36 on Tuesday January 16th, then I'd know that's when I'd have to have chosen a name by. As things stand, it's not all that clear. So I umm and I ahh and I say "I'll get around to it" but I never do. It's not like it's something difficult to do - go through a book with a list of names in it, and hopefully like a few of the same ones Alexis also likes.
This break has gone by a bit too quickly. It's Friday evening already, and there's now only a long weekend between now and going back to work.
Brent Cross was today, and from the look of the traffic queues, it wasn't going to be much fun. In the end, we parked easily, just had to wait ages for lifts, and battle through pretty packed crowds. The one good thing about the John Lewis baby department, though, is that it's the one bit of the store that is totally non-seasonal. You either need baby stuff, or you don't, regardless of the time of year. So it was the quietest bit of the whole shopping centre.
Babies are expensive. Okay, let me rephrase that. The stuff you need to buy for a first baby is expensive. Naturally, as long as you keep a reasonable gap between children (we intend to) and avoid multiple births (we kind of hope we do, at least this first one is just the one) these expenses can disappear almost completely for numbers 2, 3, etc. The same stuff is recycled for the most part. Clothes, furniture, equipment, and the like. It also means I've now got a definite deadline for clearing out the spare bedroom: January 4th, by 15:00, which is when the cot and dresser/changing table are getting delivered.
I like deadlines; they concentrate the mind. I have a feeling this is why I haven't picked a name yet. There isn't a real deadline, only a vague one. If I knew Baby would be arriving at precisely 07:36 on Tuesday January 16th, then I'd know that's when I'd have to have chosen a name by. As things stand, it's not all that clear. So I umm and I ahh and I say "I'll get around to it" but I never do. It's not like it's something difficult to do - go through a book with a list of names in it, and hopefully like a few of the same ones Alexis also likes.
This break has gone by a bit too quickly. It's Friday evening already, and there's now only a long weekend between now and going back to work.
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Neil exaggerates, I knew right away he'd made a wrong turn (by the Harlequin Centre). The trouble was, I didn't think to print off the map just in case, so Neil had to wing it. Although there is a surfeit of retail parks...
Anyway, I defend the theory: if we'd gone to Brent Cross, we would have had to park at both the mall AND the horrible retail park on the other side of the A406 which hasn't got enough parking on an ordinary weekend. It would have been carpark rage. ;)