I spent last week frantically working on getting envelopes addressed for the invitations, with the plan of getting them posted last weekend - I would be visiting home so could get some of them hand-delivered, saving on postage. Clearly the plan was ingenious, so I was flogging myself to get the ones finished for people who lived near my parents.
Until late Thursday night, when I sent a text to my mum chasing up the last few addresses. Her response was "Have you sealed the envelopes yet?"
Ummm, no, because I'm still writing the addresses. Why?
Apparently after our conversation the previous week about how Jon and I did not want to do a gift list, she has decided that it would be best for us to do a gift list. Hurrah.
So, Friday afternoon, Jon and I bunked off work and went to set up a gift list.
Near us there are really only two shops which can be used for making a gift list -
John Lewis, or
Debenhams. Whilst we have always appreciated browsing in John Lewis, the prices are pretty ridiculous there, as they tend to target the slightly more well-off shopper. Debenhams had always been where we went for the sensibly-priced alternative. So Debenhams was our first stop.
We found the wedding registry desk, and saw a member of staff nearby who was helping another customer. We loitered by the desk waiting for her to finish with this customer, or someone else to walk by, who could tell us who we needed to speak to, as the desk was very very empty.
And we waited.
And we waited.
Eventually, after about twenty minutes, the staff member finished with her customer and came over to me. Oh no, she wasn't the wedding registry lady, but if we went over to the tills they'd be able to tell me where she was.
I (by this point Jon had wandered off to be amused elsewhere) wandered over to the tills, and waited as the two slowest cashiers in the world took forever serving the two slowest customers in the world.
And I waited.
And I waited.
Finally, one of the customers was sent on her way, and I was able to ask about the lady who manned the registry service. Apparently this question was extremely unexpected, so the cashier had to disappear into the staff only area to try and find out what was happening.
And I waited.
And I waited.
At long last she returned and told me that the woman I needed was on lunch, and would not be back for another 10 minutes. No-one else was able to help me, but we could maybe look around and see if there was anything we liked.
By this point we had been standing and waiting for what felt like the whole afternoon but was probably in reality about 40 minutes - which is a long time when actually you just want to buy something. They wouldn't have had to work for it, we were standing there going "Please let us spend money with you!" and we were getting zip.
What was worse was that our time-killing browse of the items which we were looking to register for took approximately 90 seconds. There wasn't much there at all, which was disappointing.
So, our patience gone, even the promise of a £50 gift card from the store in return for registering with them didn't hold enough allure to keep us there, and we left, heading instead for John Lewis, the place of the £16 spatula.
It was the work of maybe 15 minutes to get our list all set up, by a very friendly and efficient lady, and we were handed both a barcode scanner and a voucher for a free hot drink and slice of cake each in the cafe, and we were off.
The barcode scanner was sadly a bit dicky, and kept randomly losing signal if I bent down too long to look at something, and the scanner part didn't work very well either, so we spent most of the afternoon attempting to scan things and then having to type in the product number ourselves using the stylus. This was tricky for the bigger and heavier objects which had the product numbers on low shelves, so we did a lot of squatting and bending and contorting whilst trying to both read and enter the numbers without losing signal.
Guys, I didn't realise how much weird and expensive household stuff there was in the world until I spent an afternoon painstakingly going through it all to try and work out if I wanted it or not.
Firstly, because I am a child, and this seemed a little bit rude:
Heeheehee tiddly pots.
I don't know what a 'Big love bowl' is that warrants something made that much of plastic being that expensive. Possibly it is some kind of totem for a religious ceremony of some sort? As a spoon is involved I can only assumed it is a ceremony that involves ice cream.
A mat made of cork fish! If the one made of 5 cork fish was too big for your needs, there was a smaller mat made out of 3 cork fish, so it can fit into just about every household seamlessly.
Perfect! Just what I needed to subtly store all those toothpicks I do not have. Classy, elegant, unobtrusive... And for just less than £20 looks nothing at all like the little plastic animals they used to give me ice cream in at chain pubs when I was a kid. Nothing at all.
Oh, you think, looking at this little silver cage, this is quite lovely, what is it? Why it is a tea strainer! The little bird is the strainer, and the little cage is where you rest it when you are finished with it so you don't get tea gunk dripping all over your table. Now, pretending for a moment that you at 100% behind this strange fascination for birdcages which seems to be gripping society at the moment, you take a look at the price tag...
What a bargain! Why, that is less than the cost of
three of those stupid Big Love Bowls, surely you can't turn down that price?
You will note that the strainer, bowl and toothpick holder are all from the same high-value high-use brand, Alessi. I would not like to go round to their house, no sir, because that would be full of some crazy shit.
(This is not the first time I have had an appropriate use for this gif. Apparently it is more regularly suited to daily life than you would think.)
I can only assume this is for when I have 6 extremely picky, but not very hungry friends around for dinner at the same time.
Guess how much this chair costs. Go on, guess! I bet you can't guess! Have a go.
£224! For all those American sorts out there, that's $377.
For a plastic chair. That is BRIGHT GREEN.
By this point, Jon and I were flagging heavily, to the point that Jon had spent five minutes flicking through a swatch book for a £2000 leather chair so he had an excuse to sit down for a bit. It was only sensible that we made our way to the cafe to make the use of the free drink-and-cake voucher.
However ridiculous the rest of the shop might have been, that GIANT piece of cake was an absolute work of art. Even if we did have to eat it with a soup spoon because Jon grabbed without looking and neither of us had the energy to go back and switch the cutlery.
