Temporary Rescue/Dept Store Hell

True to their words, Meridian, her dh and ds we're at ours for 9am, so we loaded dd1 and myself into the car and set off into Derby.

The obligatory Starbucks was consumed, before we did a dash around the shops calling at Game for the kids to spend their xmas cash on Nintendo DS games and accessories, dd1 has purchased 'Dora saves the snow princess' whilst her friend got an Indiana Jones Lego cover and stylus set. I don't think they had the game he wanted, so he left it at that for today.
We scooted past the stationers, where Meridian got a fab storage box and headed back into the Westfield Mecca.

Cunningly Meridians dh then took the kids for a bite to eat, whilst we attempted to run around the shops. Monsoon came up tops and I have another daytime work type 3/4 sleeve warm jumper type top, whilst I got the kids the same top in different sizes (cream with sparkles) and dd2 got a leotard for ballet for a mere £4.50 :-)

Debenhams were next and I was giving them a go today as they usually have some ok stuff in there and they'd kindly sent me a £5.00 voucher to use, as I'd not shopped with them for a while and they wanted to tempt me back in. So voucher in hand off I went, I found clothes 2 x jeans to try on and a lovely Jasper Conran top. I went and stood in the que with Meridian, and waited, waited some more, drummed my fingers, tapped my feet, Meridian tried her tops on in the line as she got fed up.....the people in front of us, asked if any more changing rooms? no sorry, the other one is closed and the Warehouse one is full.......now from what I could see, we were in the entrance to a room, which could have held at least another 6 more cubicles than it appeared to have......we gave it another 5 mins, then Matt started calling to see where we were, so I passed the assistant my clothes and left. Meridian paid for her stuff, which was another one person on the till, 4 people deep que, so when she got to the front, not only did she complain, but I pointed out to the assistant that if their shop does go bust in the next few weeks, its not because of people not wanting to shop there, its due to lack of staffing in the right places and lack of rooms to try the damn product on in. Like most shop assistants these days, she just shrugged, another person not at all bothered to do a job well.

This has reminded me to stay shopping local, with stores whose proprietors and staff actually care about their customers. I shall be visiting Que's sale next week to get my jeans from there, they may be more expensive, but at least I can try the damn things on and get good service.

I dived into M&S to get some lovely desserts for New Years Eve, as we have a few people popping around for a glass of their choice and some games, although one person kindly told me yesterday that they will only be playing wargame based games, to which I sniggered and waved Articulate at them, so we shall see....I'm sure we can fit a few different ones in :-)

To finish the day off dd1 and I went for a swim, or rather more of a splash in her case, as despite my protestations about her trying to not wet my hair too much, I was drenched by the end of it, despite tying it up.....still her swimming on her back is improving, just really gotta get her feet off the floor when she's on her front, and it is pure lazyness that is making her put them back down, I think some more time in the big pool with her dad is needed. (I'm trying not to be pushy here, but her mates can happily swim on their fronts now and she will do it in class when asked, just never for me! oh the teenage years are going to be fun....)