ailbhe | Household goods and all-day shopping sprees (Reply)

Today we woke up and went shopping. It was great. We started at about eleven, off to the Broad Street Mall to locate picture frames and investigate other things. Then we went on a great gravy-boat hunt in John Lewis, Debenhams, House of Fraser, Woolworths, BHS, and lots of other places. We had lunch in Woolworths, though we did try to find somewhere else that fitted our likes (tea, cups and saucers, interesting plain food with an option on exotic, no background music, reasonably priced, decent-sized tables).

We spent hours walking. We walked all over several department stores and two shopping centres. We made brief forays into a few highstreet shops and a couple of small shopping centres too.

Eventually, we got a mortar and pestle from John Lewis (it's so cute, it's ceramic and it's about the size of an eggcup), and a gravy boat and saucer in a delightful relief pattern (warm white, the pattern is oakleaves, acorns, and we think maybe sycamore leaves) from House of Fraser. Stopping my mother from buying me things for my lovely little house is hard.

I managed to pay for the cream jug and sugar bowl myself though; blue-white, very very plain, and I think delightful.

Finally, we stopped for the picture frame. 60x80 cm in dark blue wood, just right for the architect's drawing of St Paul's Cathedral we want to hang over the library fireplace.

Wonderful. An exhausting and delightful day.