Mirror, Mirror

Posted on 2007/09/13 23:25:14 (September 2007).

[Sunday 9th September]
Chie had very wisely suggested that at the end of the holiday we should leave a day spare, in London, with no particular agenda, to give us a chance to rest prior to going back to work.

I spent the morning industriously sorting through my holiday snaps, in an attempt to get them up on the web, and mid-afternoon we headed out to do a spot of shopping.

Our interior design consultant (i.e. my 88 year old Grandmother) had suggested a number of areas for improvement on her first visit to our flat, and we had gradually been working our way through these over the past few weeks in an attempt to make a more homely environment - packing some of the boxes away, putting some pictures up, getting a nice wall clock, putting a cloth on the table, and so on.

Two of the remaining items on the agenda were to get a full length mirror, and some cushions. Whilst in Edinburgh we had popped into a shop which had just happened to have each of these requirements, and both to our liking. Luckily this shop also had a branch in London, which was very convenient given that there was no way we were going to have brought a 30KG mirror all the way back from Scotland with us.

So we bought the mirror and a couple of cushions for the sofa. We initially planned to have it all delivered, but then on enquiring how much it would be, it turned out cheaper just to pay for a taxi ourselves. So the two of us walked out of the shop with a large and fairly heavy (30 kilograms to be precise) box and, given that we never seem to want to make life easy for ourselves, decided to go and get lunch first before heading home. Actually that wasn't really that much of an ordeal - we just went into a branch of Subway, but we must have looked a bit odd. Outside this Subway seemed to be something of a blackspot for taxis (lots passed, but they all had their lights off - although I can't help but wonder if they did this deliberately on seeing the huge box we had). Eventually we decided to give up on that spot, and walk round the corner, where either there were just more available taxis, or we were at a vantage point in that they couldn't so easily see us first and turn their light off. A decidedly unhelpful taxi driver stopped for us, and I can't help but wonder if he added some kind of supplement for having the big parcel, despite not lifting a finger to get it into or out of his cab, as the fare seemed to come to much more than I ever remember previously paying to get back home from the city centre. Anyway, it was still cheaper than having it delivered I suppose.

So we then spent the remainder of the afternoon assembling our mirror, which was actually more than just a mirror, and has a little draw, some shelves, and a place to hang clothes. These things always look trivially easy to begin with, and then end up taking hours to put together. We got there in the end though.

For dinner we had a simple Japanese meal - miso soup, rice, and a few odds and ends that were hanging around in the fridge, including some very well femented kimchi.

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