I went out early to get my hair cut at my usual hairdresser's, Essential Barbers, in Monkston Park. As they open for business at 9.30 I arrived in good time and was inside the shop as soon as they opened up and was in the seat and having my hair cut almost immediately and was done and dusted within 30 minutes and then driving home.
The mad Christmas dash is well and truly underway. Carol thought she had someone coming to visit this morning, but during the morning realised it was tomorrow, so we went out with the intention of having a coffee and something to eat in The Range and a good excuse to browse. As we turned into the estate at Winter Hill, where The Range is situated, I was followed by this inconsiderate individual who expected me to speed up within the estate. He drove as near as he could behind we and got quite aerated because I wouldn't do what he wanted. We went right into The Range Carpark and he went left into Bunning's carpark so why get so annoyed when he was going to be turning off within seconds? Some people just have no patience and expect to have the road entirely to themselves and really don't like the idea of someone else getting in their way. Crazy!
Not many parking spaces left in the carpark. Walking in through the front door of the store we were greeted by every conceivable type of Christmas tree lights, flashing, non-flashing and in between, pulsing, and glowing madly. Then, going up in the escalator we were greeted by two obscenely over-eager Father Christmas figures, which began singing horribly, certainly enough to give any child nightmares. Swaying about madly, and totally scary. An endless range of Father Christmas figures lined the outer edge, giving the impression of a sort of mad convention of the characters. Over-kill definitely.
The whole of the upstairs floor in The Range taken over by Christmas decorations. An aisle full of twinkly decorations that play music, but none very tuneful as they weren't in harmony with one another. Also, we found a row of interactive characters, sort of Santa's helpers, little green-and-red clad elves. You press the button on their hands and they play a Christmas song, but, being us, with a sense of fun, we have to set off a whole selection of them, a total cacophony. We did this in a store at Westcroft a couple of Christmases ago, where each figure set of the next figure, as they interacted with each other. It caused a great deal of amusement for not only ourselves but other shoppers!
Good to see we're helping the Chinese economy ticking over nicely for yet another year. Almost all of this Christmas stuff will be made in China or at least somewhere in the East. Not that I'm knocking their ability to take so many of our jobs. But I can imagine much of it being made in sweatshops and the staff working for a pittance and probably having absolutely no idea what a Christmas elf of glass bauble for a tree is and then packed up and loaded into several vast containers and then onto a ship and then sent across the sea to be sold in these places. And then, after the Christmas rush is over, returned to some vast warehouse and the following year sold at vastly reduced prices.
We then went to the café and had intended ordering paninis and coffee. Actually not a bad little place to eat, but there was a long queue and the man on the till didn't seem to know how to do his job and it was him fiddling about which was causing the queue. He had no idea how to operate the till. Just the company's lack of training which was obviously behind this. We eventually got our lattes and what looked like chocolate cake and sat and ate it. Not particularly nice, it was partly chocolate and partly some sort of mauve-coloured cake. Over-priced and not worth the effort
Carol bought a fish tank as she wants to get an aquarium, which we bought along with gravel and water treatment. We will have to leave the buying of the fish for another day, perhaps in Dobbie's or Frost's garden centres. We went home and she set up the tank, putting the water treatment in the water as it takes 24 hours before you can put any fish in.
Coming out of the store we saw a couple in a car in front of us who'd obviously had an almighty row. It looked as if he was sulking because she wanted to go Christmas shopping and he didn't. The body-language said it all. He drew up in their car and she got out and he drove off in a right mood and almost hit someone crossing the carpark with a load of shopping. Oh dear, if that's the effect Christmas has on people, is it really worth all the bother and stress? Surely not. Perhaps the musical and discordant decorations we saw upstairs in the store were a sort of symbol of this sort of total disharmony of the shoppers (or at least, some of them.) So much for it being a season of peace and happiness to all men (and women.)
Not many parking spaces left in the carpark. Walking in through the front door of the store we were greeted by every conceivable type of Christmas tree lights, flashing, non-flashing and in between, pulsing, and glowing madly. Then, going up in the escalator we were greeted by two obscenely over-eager Father Christmas figures, which began singing horribly, certainly enough to give any child nightmares. Swaying about madly, and totally scary. An endless range of Father Christmas figures lined the outer edge, giving the impression of a sort of mad convention of the characters. Over-kill definitely.
The whole of the upstairs floor in The Range taken over by Christmas decorations. An aisle full of twinkly decorations that play music, but none very tuneful as they weren't in harmony with one another. Also, we found a row of interactive characters, sort of Santa's helpers, little green-and-red clad elves. You press the button on their hands and they play a Christmas song, but, being us, with a sense of fun, we have to set off a whole selection of them, a total cacophony. We did this in a store at Westcroft a couple of Christmases ago, where each figure set of the next figure, as they interacted with each other. It caused a great deal of amusement for not only ourselves but other shoppers!
Good to see we're helping the Chinese economy ticking over nicely for yet another year. Almost all of this Christmas stuff will be made in China or at least somewhere in the East. Not that I'm knocking their ability to take so many of our jobs. But I can imagine much of it being made in sweatshops and the staff working for a pittance and probably having absolutely no idea what a Christmas elf of glass bauble for a tree is and then packed up and loaded into several vast containers and then onto a ship and then sent across the sea to be sold in these places. And then, after the Christmas rush is over, returned to some vast warehouse and the following year sold at vastly reduced prices.
We then went to the café and had intended ordering paninis and coffee. Actually not a bad little place to eat, but there was a long queue and the man on the till didn't seem to know how to do his job and it was him fiddling about which was causing the queue. He had no idea how to operate the till. Just the company's lack of training which was obviously behind this. We eventually got our lattes and what looked like chocolate cake and sat and ate it. Not particularly nice, it was partly chocolate and partly some sort of mauve-coloured cake. Over-priced and not worth the effort
Carol bought a fish tank as she wants to get an aquarium, which we bought along with gravel and water treatment. We will have to leave the buying of the fish for another day, perhaps in Dobbie's or Frost's garden centres. We went home and she set up the tank, putting the water treatment in the water as it takes 24 hours before you can put any fish in.
Coming out of the store we saw a couple in a car in front of us who'd obviously had an almighty row. It looked as if he was sulking because she wanted to go Christmas shopping and he didn't. The body-language said it all. He drew up in their car and she got out and he drove off in a right mood and almost hit someone crossing the carpark with a load of shopping. Oh dear, if that's the effect Christmas has on people, is it really worth all the bother and stress? Surely not. Perhaps the musical and discordant decorations we saw upstairs in the store were a sort of symbol of this sort of total disharmony of the shoppers (or at least, some of them.) So much for it being a season of peace and happiness to all men (and women.)
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