A shopping trip
I was lucky enough to get a lot of money for my birthday from my very generous, possibly ever so slightly guilty feeling dad (he’d just bought my sister a ticket to Korea), the money has been going on a few things but the bulk of the money was going to go on a new iPad (when the new one gets released, presumably sometime in the spring) BUT my laptop, which to be honest has never been that particularly good (it had a design flaw with the fan that meant it sounded like it was about to take off and in the last few months it has been overheating so badly that it keeps crashing and the multiple crashes has corrupted the operating system to such an extent that everything is now extremely slow, my outlook doesn’t work and I can now no longer download and listen to audiobooks – amongst other random things). So it desperately needed to be chucked out of the window in a fit of pique (honestly, I didn’t really), so I couldn’t in good knowledge go and buy an iPad knowing that at some point, possibly very soon, my laptop would crash (again) and this time despite all the coaxing in the world, never boot up again. Despite the fact that I think if I did have an iPad it would pretty much take over a lot of the functions I use a laptop for, it wouldn’t take over all of them, so I would have still needed to replace my laptop whether I’d just spent a lot of money on an iPad or not. So after another day of not being able to boot up my laptop first thing in the morning, I decided the next day (today) that I was going to give up on the iPad and buy a new laptop, which to be honest is to me about as exciting as buying a new washer-dryer, in fact buying a new washer-dryer would be more exciting, as there would be new functions to play with and presumably when you took the clothes out after it’s finished drying, the clothes would actually be dry (guess which other piece of household electrical equipment I’d also like to replace). So after spending all week (apart from a brief coffee shop visit on the Monday) successfully not going into town, I went into town.
First up was M&S to buy myself some more socks, honestly I am bad, I’m constantly nagging the kids about loosing their socks, but I’m just the same! Then as a consolation to having to buy a (slightly cheaper) laptop instead of an iPad, I treated myself to some old fashioned iPads, i.e. some books, I’ve replenished my to-read pile a bit recently but am still reading so slowly that my newly to-read pile should at this rate last me till summer. I also went to buy a new frying pan, a decent one that had been reduced down from £50 to £12.50, I really do think buying decent cookware (if you can afford it) pays off, we’re still using the saucepan set which we bought when we got married (and was an expensive luxury) and they’re good pans which I could easily see us still using when we’re grandparents, so over the course of time that extra expense has more than paid itself off, but we’ve always bought cheap frying pans and they only last a few years, well hopefully not any more now, unless there was a reason why it was reduced so low.
Not having been in town since Monday, it was my first visit to the shopping centre since a tragic event last Monday when someone killed themselves (I wasn’t there at the time, but my sister and aunt were in the department store (buying frying pans) that joins onto the centre). I of course feel desperately sorry for the person who died and their family but seeing the very obvious extra security there now (and the security was already pretty good) and being reminded that she landed just outside the fast food restaurant which me and Boy Lacer had been sitting outside just the day before, *shudder*. I guess if you’re desperate enough to do something like that you’re not thinking of anyone else and she wouldn’t of thought about the kids outside the restaurant or to be brutally honest the financial consequences of her actions, the (normally very busy) shopping centre had to close for the rest of the day and the now extra security is presumably going to increase commercial rents in the centre in a town where the commercial rents are already amongst the highest in the country, possibly providing that last straw to close businesses as they can’t afford the rent increases and of course I know you could say they’re ‘only’ businesses but businesses are made of people and they’re effected to. But I ‘know’ of course that all that would have been the last thing she was thinking of, very sad.
On a brighter note I then went and bought the laptop, trying very hard not to glance wistfully at the MacBook Airs on the table opposite the laptops, which all looked like bricks in comparison. I think my new laptop (which I actually haven’t even got out the box yet, I pathetically don’t know our wi-fi passcodes and a laptop without internet is pretty useless) is my fourth laptop, each one lasting the typical three years before something goes wrong with it and after a while they all begin to look the same, whereas an iPad or a MacBook, sorry but I wouldn’t be sat here now blogging, I’d be stroking my new toy lovingly (yes I appear to have turned into a die hard Apple geek and I still can’t find my iPhone). Anyway for the record I bought a new HP, despite vowing I was never going to buy an HP again (the laptop with the fan problem was an HP, the fan problem was sent off to be repaired by the way and the fault re-occured after a month) but it was the closest thing to having the specs I wanted for my budget, so lets hope HP have been working on their fan design over the last three years.
