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February 02, 2003
Anti-Consumer Month is Over
We celebrated by getting in the car and looking at every child's bed available in South-East England before buying the one we first thought of. At IKEA on a Saturday afternoon.
The children were remarkably sanguine about giving up their entire Saturday to shopping. We did fetch up at the Hackney City Farm at one point, allowing them to see a slightly different variety of small farm animals from those at our 'regular' city farm, Brooks Farm in Leyton. We also had a really delicious, relatively cheap, lunch at their café.
It was a good thing it was reasonably cheap, because I'd neglected to bring out my purse, so we just about managed to scrape together enough from the bottom of my handbag, pockets, glove compartment, etc. to pay for the meal. I reallly regretted not having enough cash to bring home a box of fresh laid duck eggs. On the extensive community noticeboard (all greenish alternative ventures have one of these) I noticed an ad for The Back Passages of Spitalfields, described as "like a guided walking tour, only good". I'll look out for it running again this summer. Update 6/4/03: The people behind the Back Passages wrote to let me know that the walks have started up again for 2003, and that all the details are on their website.
Having no cash meant that we couldn't buy any drinks or ices in IKEA, but as we were driving home, complete with large lumpy packages, we spotted a new Borders complete with Starbucks. Which takes credit cards. So I ended up with a Venti Mocha Valencia. Serious error of judgement. Chocolate & coffee is a good mix. Chocolate and orange is a good mix. Chocolate and coffee and orange isn't, and besides, once you've put a bucket of whipped cream and half a pint of chocolate sauce on top this is really a pudding, not a coffee. I could easily give up several of these a day.
Now, in preparation for making Jonathan's bed, we're cleaning all the not-Jonathan stuff out of his bedroom. This includes all our vinyl. We've never had a working turntable; not in this house nor the last one. We're quickly ditching the singles, the albums we've already got on CD, and the albums we can't imagine why we bought in the first place. Next, we'll make a list of those of the rest that are easily obtainable on CD, and plan to get them (or definitive collections of all the good tracks in some cases). We'll probably keep those that are unavailable on CD. Probably.
Posted by Alison at February 2, 2003 11:25 AM
Comments
I didn't like the Mocha Vallencia, but then I don't have the whipped cream or choc sauce.
But the Vallencia syrup is very nice in steamed milk.
They will provide your mini consumers with an expresso cup of whipped milk foam if you ask them very nicely and they can sprinkle chocolate on top.
I forget how wonderfully spoilt I am having a Starbucks 100 yards from my house with a manageress who happens to be Annie.
Still, the new house is only 2 miles from her Starbucks and I will be in Alty most weekends to shop so I will still have reason to go there and poison test the new lines.
Posted by: Sue Mason at February 18, 2003 03:21 PM