We took a day off to go shopping in Cheltenham today. I was told by those in the know (i.e. Vicky) that we needed to go to Cheltenham because it had good shopping. I couldn't contain my excitement. In fact I found the sheer, giddy anticipation I felt for the trip caused my speech patterns to descend into sarcasm...
Moving on...
What started as an uneventful journey to Cheltenham rapidly descended into a farce once we entered the outskirts of the city. There were almost no signposts at all pointing us towards the town centre, so we found ourselves taking guesses at the various junctions and roundabouts. Fortunately, it seemed that the Toyota in front of us knew where we were going because we managed to follow it most of the way into town.
Our next problem came when Vic turned down the narrowest road in the world, thinking that it would lead to the huge car park just of the main road. It didn't, so Vic found herself doing a 300 point turn at the end of the road. Unfortunately there was a poorly placed iron railing on one side, with which the side of the car became very intimate. We now have a lovely scrape down the nearside rear door and wheel arch. I'm looking forward to the bill for that one. To her credit, Vic got the car out of a space designed for a hamster. A very small hamster.
Continuing into Cheltenham, we encoutered no signs at all, relying instead on following the majority of the traffic which, we assumed would be heading for the centre of town. Fortunately we were right and we did, indeed end up in the centre. The route, however gave us the ditinct impression that we were going in circles, spiralling in to an inevitable rendezvous with one of the most poorly designed multi storey car parks I have ever encountered. More on that later.
Cheltenham itself was ok. In the same way that every city centre is ok. There was an M&S, a WH Smith, an HMV... you get the idea. Pleasant enough, but nothing to make it stand out from city centres around the country. Not much in the way of all-day-breakfasts either, which considering I'd had no breakfast that morning was something of a disappointment.
One cheese and beans jacket potato and a ton of shopping bags later, we met up with Kris (I know, it's amazing. A friend who hasn't had his name bastardised by the Morrissey Naming Convention) who had been training for his new job in the Cheltenham branch of the jewellery shop he's just started work at. It was actually his second day on the job, and his first job in about 2 years, having been somewhat poorly for quite some time. We popped back to his hotel so he could get changed and met the proprietor who had an amazing french accent that sounded like it had fallen straight out of Allo Allo. I was expecting to see a framed Fallen Madonna With Ze Big Boobies on the wall in the lounge. Kris was pretty happy and enthusiastic about his new job - which makes a nice change as he's been pretty low recently.
We went for a meal in Bella Italia, which was pretty good and I managed to persuade one of the waiters to make a balloon giraffe for Vic before we left. Nice big tip there!
And then we headed back to the car park. I mentioned before that this wasn't a great car park. Well this next little incident tipped the scale from 'not a great' car park to a 'bloody stupid f*cking piece of cr*p' car park.
It had one of those payment systems by which you collect a card on entry and pay on yopur return. We had resigned ouselves to the fact that it was going to cost us £14 already (yes, I know. £14 to park a car. Now I know how sheep feel in the summer). What we did not account for (and could not have planned for) was that the machine was designed with a time limit in mind - a limit on the amount of time you had to insert the neccessary coinage. We had a handful of change and inserted the coins, as you do. Just as we inserted the penultimate coin, the machine spat out all of the previously inserted coins telling us that were were taking too long about about it.
So we tried again, this time inserting the coins as fast as we possibly could. Again, the machine petulantly spat the coins out at us. Bastard. If the town council are gonna charge us 14 quid to park in their poxy car park, they have to expect that it's gonna take a bit of time to put the damn coins in.
Before we tried a third time, we seached our pockets and dredged the fathomless depths of Vic's handbag for any higher value coinage we could use to decrease the overall insertion time. Third time lucky, although I'm sure I heard the machine chuckling evilly to itself as we made our way back to the car.
Again, on the way out of Cheltenham, there was a distinct absence of signage - one motorway sign at the end of the road with the car park set us off in a direction... then we found ourselves on the Oxford A40 road, which could have lead to disaster if not for my eagle eyes spotting the tiniest, tiniest little M5 sign.
Anyway. I'm home now. It's warm and my belly is full. Vic's gone up to bed, and I suspect I'm supposed to be on my way there now, so I'd better wrap this up.
Ciao for now!
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