Saturday, November 03, 2007

Shopping!

Well today was the day I did most of my Christmas shopping. I hate being forced to rish around crowds in December when there is seasonal merriment to be had, so I rushed around the crowds in November instead. Every shop had Christmas stuff out already! It was awful! The next celebration is Bonfire Night/Guy Fawkes Night, not Christ mas Dammit! I can't get Christmassy till after the Advent service at Old Dilton, which is the first Sunday of December. The Church has no het, or electricity, huge wooden box pews, and the choir from mum and dad's church sing old advent carols in between lessons. Then the WI type ladies hand round the first mince pies of the year. Then I can start with the Christmassey-ness.

Using gift vouchers from my birthday and what is probably food money, I bought make up kits and slippers for my sisters, a cute outfit with trucks on it for my godson, a pile of zips to make crafty things for people, wool to knit Tom's Christmas gloves and yarn and needles to go in his stocking along with a few other bits he doesn't know about. The boy cleary has good taste as he discovered the pile of Regia sock yarn in John Lewish just as I was paying for the other stuff, and so marched me back to the tills to swap what I had for three balls of Regia in 05048 - Clown. He was right of course and it's lovely. Gloves are clearly much more of an expression of love than socks as you have to knit those damn pesky fingers... :oD Especially when the dear boy wants ones that have extra long cuffs up his forearm.

I said to a friend wo saw out while shopping I hadn't bought anything for myself with a pout on my face. However I realised as I lay in bed last night, that an excuse to buy yarn, even if the finished product is going to someone else, is really a gift to me. Especially lovely yarn like Regia that knits up like a dream and changes colour as it goes and it is just well totally awesome really.

I did do some work yesterday as well, deciding roughly what I'm going to write my unassessed 2000 word essay on. Wait for it..."The commodity of Jerusalem: Selling a city" Make of that what you will, but it does give me a nice wide chronological scope what with pre medieval relics and modern souvenirs to write about.

After that I went to dinner with Tom's mum and her partner. We went to the Fox and Hounds in Crawley, Hampshire. The atmosphere was very cosy, and they kept turning the lights down lower and lower. My eyelids went with the lights as the evening and the wine went on! I had tiger prawns with chilli sauce to start, and goat's cheese tarts with caramelised onions as a main course. I love goat's cheese so it was a real treat to have those. Not something you can usually afford on a student budget. All in all it was a nice evening, and I don't think I embarrassed Tom too much.


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