Sales – Bah Humbug!
Boxing Day was spent at the mother-in-laws, including a party at Mr. Lacer’s aunt’s in the evening, where the kids were to be fed; Girl Lacer was in heaven, chocolate biscuits galore, poor Boy Lacer though, everything down to the Pringle crisps (sour cream and chive flavour) had dairy, dairy and more dairy in, so he had just some bread to eat and throwed a paddy when I wouldn’t let him have any Pringles, with the mother-in-law going, “Oh just let him have the crisps”, yes very helpful. Anyway in theory my idea of Boxing Day bliss is actually shopping, like it seems the rest of the nation, although that is at it turns out only in theory.
Anyway we came back from the mother-in-laws relatively early and several traffic jams later we were back in town and using the flimsy but relevant excuse that we needed some more goats milk, Mr. Lacer dropped me in town before he and the kids headed home. Town was heaving and it instantly foxes me why so many people want to go out shopping to spend a small fortune on stuff that is in the sales because nobody wanted to buy it before Christmas, when they’ve already probably spent a small fortune pre-Christmas and if they’ve been paid early (like Mr. Lacer) it makes it looong time before the next pay check comes. Anyway I needed to go sale shopping because even though the cynical portion of me is getting bigger by the year, I still have my inner shopper and I needed to get some more trousers for Boy Lacer as he’s resolutely refused to grow out of 18 – 24 month size trousers and I can’t keep on dressing him in summer weight trousers (you watch, he’ll have a growth spurt now), I also was rather disappointed that Santa hadn’t got me this
Cath Kidston House Sewing Basket (from cathkidston.co.uk)
Although I wasn’t really expecting this from Santa, at £40 it’s a little expensive and I don’t think Santa is overly aware of my crafty ambitions. I do have a ’sewing box’, well I brought a beginners sewing kit a few years ago, but my collection of sewing stuff has grown a little and now the lid won’t fit on, so I do need a new sewing box, not quite sure though that spending £40 on something used 98% of the time for sewing name tags on is quite appropriate, but still it’s soooo lovely! The roof is on a hinge, there’s a tray inside and it lifts off to reveal a red lined basket. Currently I also have a cupboard (we have four kitchen cupboards on our living room wall which we use for storage) which has various balls of wool, bits of fabric etc. in, so that’d free some space up to. However putting sharp pointy things in something I know Girl Lacer also finds irresistable, is probably not a fantastic idea. Anyway, so I went into town looking for more trousers for Boy Lacer and the sewing box, hoping it’d be discounted.
On the sewing box front, I know now even more that if you’re a retailer (from my experience with my book selling) you only discount what you can’t sell and there are a lot of soppy, retro obsessed, craft fiends (like me) out there who’d happily pay £40 for a sewing basket in the shape of a house. So not only wasn’t it not in the sale, it wasn’t even in the shops (I’d seen it in the Cath Kidston shop and in John Lewis previously), they’d sold out. Luckily though, although it has sold out also on the John Lewis website (where it was £2 cheaper, sob), it is still on the Cath Kidston website. I know, I’m meant to be saving for Boy Lacer’s playgroup, but as the most exciting thing Father Christmas brought me this year is some underbed storage (I kid you not) I needed something nice!
As for the trousers, well I struggled through the crowds in ZaraKids, John Lewis, Next (why oh why do people go on about the Next sale so much, the Next sale biannually reduces a shop with normally quite nice clothes into something resembling a jumble sale) and I couldn’t find any 18 – 24 month trousers, so I braved Marks and Spencer, which looked only slightly less like a jumble sale and found two pairs of trousers, a lovely soft cashmere jumper and two packets of socks for Boy Lacer for the reasonable total of £32 and guess what, none of it was in the sale!
On the way out of time I walked past Clarks and despite the store looking not particularly attractive either I was drawn in by some sort of magnetic attraction (I needed some more winter shoes, Converses do make one’s toes cold!) and I found a lovely pair of ankle boots, Gore-tex (so waterproof) and lined (so warm) and £20 off, so one good thing about sales.
