On Top of the World

For someone who hates shopping as much as I do, I did a pretty good job of hiding it today. My sister-in-law couldn’t make it after all, which meant I had the whole day to wander around by myself. And so I did. I didn’t intend to spend that long in there, it just kind of worked out that way. I got into the city at about 7:45 this morning, and got picked up at 4:15.

The only thing I had to eat until I got home was a scone with jam and cream and a mug of coffee. I was quite looking forward to my scone, and after I spread some jam and cream on my first morsel and put it in my mouth, something was not right. At first I thought it might be the scone, but that was fine. And the jam was fine. The cream was not. It had that awful cheesy, rancid taste. I took it back said that the cream didn’t taste quite right, and they said they’d get some more. A little while later, the girl came over to me and said that the chef tasted it and said there was absolutely nothing wrong with it, and thought that maybe because the cream wasn’t sweetened, that’s why I thought there was something wrong! After years of eating kitchener buns, I know very well what fresh cream tastes like (mmm fresh cream), and that was not fresh cream. Anyway, the new cream was brought out and it tasted as fresh cream should, so that matter was resolved, although I had a bit of a Witches Moment* when I got the new cream and thought how nice it tasted.

After breakfast, the shopping began in earnest. It was actually a very productive day, and I bought enough that I did a bit of a cleanout of my existing wardrobe and relegated some of the older items to the goodwill pile. So it was a good day of shopping but my feet are so sore, and I’m ready to sleep!

* In the book The Witches by Roald Dahl, there is a part where all the witches are having dinner after their Annual Meeting. A woman returns her meat to the kitchen, saying it’s tough, and after the chef puts a new piece of meat on the plate, all the people in the kitchen take turns spitting on it before it’s given back to the woman. Later on it’s reported back that the woman thought the second piece of meat was perfect.

We had a very quiet New Year this year, and after the disaster that was Christmas Eve, that was exactly the way I wanted it. We had dinner with 2 of my sisters-in-law, and then we came home and just hung around until about 5 to 12, when we went out onto the balcony with a glass of sparkling wine to toast at midnight. We got to watch 7 or 8 fireworks displays from our balcony, which was quite nice as well.

Other than the coming of a new year, not a lot has been going on. The weather here lately has been absolutely awful, in the high 30s (Celsius) for the past few days, and it finally cooled down tonight. It’s been a pretty boring Christmas holidays, being stuck at home in the unbearable heat. Thank goodness we got the air conditioners installed, otherwise it would have been a very unpleasant week indeed.

Tomorrow I’m heading into the city with my sister-in-law to see if there’s anything left worth buying in the sales. We ventured in last Sunday and bought a half-price cutlery set (well, 2 actually - one for my parents because it was a design and brand that I knew my mum loved, so I rang and asked her if she wanted one as well) and a few cheap things. One of the department stores opens at 7am, and I’m getting dropped off at 7:30, so it will be interesting to see how many people are around, considering I don’t think anything else there will be open!