alexist

The woman in my NCT class who had her baby early e-mailed the group today--she said that those of us scheduled to deliver there shouldn't worry. Despite all the cuts and how disorganised they can be, the actual maternity unit is well run and the staff are great.

In other news, today we need to venture out and possibly even shop (groceries, at the very least)

So we went shopping.

We needed to go to Borders. Neil hates driving to Brent Cross Borders (not in the mall but in the retail park on the other side of the A406) so he wanted to take the tube to Islington. Walking and I are not good friends right now. Small stalemate. Then I remembered we had to go to Mothercare anyway, and this required the car. Mothercare Brent Cross (in the mall proper) was not a good idea. So I suggested Watford, which has both Mothercare and Borders in close-ish proxmity. We live 5 minutes from the M1, so getting there is no trouble (without traffic, it takes about 20 minutes).

Watford has an interesting approach to out of town retail parks. They aren't out of town. Instead, they cluster around the town centre. Between the retail parks and the Harlequin Centre (whose parking signs showed a mere 30 spaces remaining), it was a traffic nightmare; we made a wrong turn and wasted 10 minutes. Luckily, once we went in a circle, all was fine.

It was a good thing my willpower cracked, because they didn't have the carseat we wanted in stock, and we had to order it. We got some other stuff too. I know, I know... bad luck...

We'll have to brave John Lewis at some point too :/

I was just checking Brent Cross opening hours for this week. It seems that on New Years Day, everything BUT John Lewis is closed. I wonder how JL swung that?! It's perfectly legal, but John Lewis is a partnership and employees have to approve all working hours (which is why Waitrose always has the shortest opening hours of any supermarket chain). They must have really bribed employees to get them to work on New Years.