Locked out!
Yesterday was fun, not. I took the kids out into town about 11.30 and as I shut the front door, key rings (I have multiple, I ‘collect’ (well I have two) sneaker key rings plus I have a Cath Kidston key ring I got as a consolation prize once), anyway key rings in hand, I looked down at my hand and then instantly remembered that I’d taken my front door key off the key rings the day before and stuck it in my minuscule pocket of my running shorts as I went for a run. My front door locks automatically and at that point I’d already shut it, oops! So I had from 11.30 to when Mr. Lacer came home to kill.
Luckily we needed to go shopping anyway but I hadn’t been planning on taking six hours in doing it! We’d planned for lunch in town anyway, so we went to McDonalds and then I took the kids on a very long and tortuous (for them and for some extent me, as they arn’t my ideal window shopping companions) bout of window shopping.
I also needed to get some new shoes having definitely wrecked my pink summer shoes last week (they lasted two months which is bad, specially considering they were Clarks but I can’t blame Clarks for the weather unfortunately). So back to my beloved fall back, Converses, I am a Converses freak, I am extremely fussy about my shoes having pes cavus (high arches basically) so I demand that my shoes be comfortable plus also not driving and thus walking everywhere they have to last, so many ‘cheap’ shoes in the shops wouldn’t last on my feet for a month (literally, I went through a stage of buying cheap as I could get shoes and that was how long they lasted, including one pair so bad the nail that held the sole of the boot on literally wore through into the shoe, I only realised that this was happening on this particular pair of shoes after I’d hobbled into town thinking “What on earth is wrong with my shoe?”, I threw myself on a bench once in town, looked in the shoe and was horrified to find a nail sticking out of my shoe going into my foot. So I had no choice but to hop into the nearest shoe shop and buy a pair of trainers so I could walk home again!). Anyway Converses long ago passed my comfortable and well made test with the added benefit they look good! I get through on average a pair of Converses in 6 months before the sole starts getting worn away but at £30 for six months pretty much continuous wear that’s not bad. Before my extended shopping trip yesterday I had done a spot of online research and this is the pair I really desperately wanted,
Camilla Engman Red Riding Hood converses, see http://www.converse.com
How gorgeous are those? Unfortunately I didn’t find them, I wasn’t really expecting to find them really, it tends to be more conventional converses in my neck of the woods, so I got these instead,
Ahhh, box fresh Converses!
After the new shoes it was off to the book shops, I’m still on the look out for my next Booker longlist attempt. I tried Waterstones first, absolutely nothing! Then I tried Borders and I found Netherland, which I’m definitely not going to read after hearing too many bad reviews and it’s not my sort of book anyway, cricket, yuck! I also found The Secret Scripture and A Fraction of the Whole but I was disappointed I couldn’t find any of the rest of the list. I’d have thought something like the Booker longlist would have prompted these books to be stocked! I was tempted by A Fraction of the Whole but then got put off by the price, I still have quite a too be read backlog and a couple of new fiction books being published in the next few months I’m desperate to get my hands on and at the moment I’d rather spend the cash I have on something guaranteed (in my mind at least) to be good. After being disappointed by The Enchantress of Florence and hearing the bad reviews of Netherland I’m thinking are the Booker judges really the people I want dictating my book purchases?
We did find two new books to add to our collective family wishlist though, they’ve released (and it’s only August sigh) a whole load of 2009 children’s annuals (eek is it that year already?) and the kids landed like vultures on the Charlie and Lola one. We have this year’s one (of course) and I remember being rather disappointed that both stories in it were ones we already had but the 2009 annual has three stories and we don’t have any of them. So that’s a stocking present for Girl Lacer sorted then, I’ll buy it soon (when she’s not around) as Waterstones currently have them at £2 off. I think Boy Lacer would also love the annual (he reads the 2008 annual more than Girl Lacer does) but he’ll have to settle for the In the Night Garden annual, which he also liked the look of.
So, after the bookshops, a trip round Cath Kidston for a new wallet more suited to my new cash based existence (and at £6 not a bad price, although Mr. Lacer saw it and said it looked like it was 50p).
Then supermarket and then still about two and a half hours to kill and the kids to be fed their tea at some point, so we went to a children’s cafe with a good play area, sigh it would almost have been cheaper to have called out a locksmith! The cafe is nice but their food was already expensive but they’ve put their prices up (understandable I know with the food price rises) but I think they’re in danger of pricing themselves out of the market, we were the only people I could see actually eating there that day. We stayed there as long as we could (until they turned the music off!) and then went home. I still wasn’t convinced Mr. Lacer would actually be there, so we stopped off in Sainsbury’s where they had some garden game kits for £1.99, we brought a cricket set (I know, I said I hated cricket) with the idea of playing it in the front garden whilst we waited but when we got home Mr. Lacer had beaten us to it by 5 minutes!
So, a busy day and a tiring one, so I needed a nice tea to pick me up as I sat down that night in the play room that is my living room. Jamie Oliver’s Peach, Prosciutto and Mozzarella salad, Mr. Lacer watched me make it and went “That looks an expensive salad” and yes it was a bit, but I needed a treat and it was still cheaper than eating at the cafe I fed the kids in!
From Jamie Oliver’s Naked Chef days again (The Return of the Naked Chef), this salad is delicious. I tried to make it once before, back in my naive 20s, I was staying at my dad’s for Christmas and I insisted on doing the starter and this was going to be it, except it was Norfolk, in December, in the 90s (?), of course they didn’t have fresh peaches, I’m not even sure they had prosciutto, I think the salad turned out rather different! Anyway, that was the last time I tried to make it, so I never got to find out exactly how delicious peach and prosciutto together actually is, it is gorgeous, forget the old melon combo, prosciutto and peach it is! Recipe here, courtesy of the Food Network (takes a while to load).
I love my Chuck Taylor’s! They’re pretty much the only shoes I wear. The Camilla Engman ones are adorable! I have the same pair that you bought, and they’re the ones I wear most often. I need to get a red and a green pair at some point…
Ahhh they’re brilliant aren’t they! I was thinking green to, as I wear a lot of green and I was very almost tempted by a pair of red patent ones! But in the end blue goes with everything