Tuesday February 12, 2008
To the garden centre for a few bits, arriving just four minutes after eleven. The ‘all day’ breakfast finishes at eleven.
“Oh, that’s disappointing,” I said. “I don’t suppose there’s any hope of a little latitude to allow for the heavy traffic?”
“Breakfast is finished.”
“Well, can I have lunch, then?”
“Lunch is at twelve thirty.”
Ah well. That’s Britain for you.
We had mediocre coffee and lousy pastries instead, and then went on to pick up our bits and pieces.
“Shall we have lunch here?” I asked when we’d stowed our stuff in the car.
“Not unless you’re desperate. The food here isn’t impressive and it’s beastly expensive.”
“You’re right. Let’s head home, then, and call in at Sainsbury’s on the way.”
As it panned out, the way to Sainsbury’s, as well as large sections of Bridgwater in general, was barred by a major warehouse fire, with appliances, police and ambulance all in attendance. So we had to go to Asda/Wall-Mart instead, the first time since coming to Bridgwater.
Actually, it wasn’t so bad, though I’m convinced the food is not as tasty as at Sainsbury’s. They do have self-checkout however, so we had enormous fun playing with the computer and our basket of goodies.
“I enjoyed that,” Graham said, all smiles and bounciness.
“Good. Me too. Let’s get back in the car quick, though, out of this smoke.”
So we piled back in, zonked the a/c up full–the extravagance!–and edged our way into the slow-moving traffic once more, making up stories to go with the red-faced, frustrated drivers in the vehicles about us.
It says something about us that we had fun in the face of all that adversity.
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