It was an early rise for me this morning, relatively speaking. I slept soundly. Kerry has me in Jospeh’s bedroom, which is quite comfortable. I spent the bulk of the morning chatting with Kerry on the couch while chipping away at writing yesterday’s blog. Since I’ve been here, Kerry has been feeding me cups of tea, and we’ve had some deep and meaningful conversations about kids, life and all that entails. This morning, I was even treated to a rather delicious bacon roll. Yummy. They certainly know how to make me feel comfortable.
With very little else on today’s agenda, I thought I’d take the opportunity to swing past Tescos to load up on some comfort food shopping to take back to Holland with us. Kerry reminded me about the Tescos superstore not far from here in Pitsea. This would be more convenient than driving to Lakeside, so I went there and loaded up a trolly full of all those things we can’t get back home. Jae had sent me through a shopping list of things for Dad, so I picked all those up as well.
I collected Jae from Dad’s house with the car now laden with shopping. The plan for this evening was to go to Toby’s Carvery with Kerry and her entire family as a thank you for them putting me up. This meant there likely wouldn’t be enough time to wander around the inside of the Lakeside Shopping centre, but we could drop by the Smyths toy shop and Facetime with Joey to see if he needed anything. As it turned out, there was one particular Lego set he was keen on, so I lifted that from the shelves, and it will be tucked away when we get home as a Christmas gift for him.
Still, with some time to kill, we decided to have Sandy join us via Facetime to wander around the massive Hobby Craft shop next door. We meandered around the store, walking the length of all the aisles, and Sandy picked out a couple of reems of speciality paper for her hobby activities. Jae was enamoured with the candle-making section, so we grabbed her a host of candle-making paraphernalia. For Joey, we picked out a few model-set-building paints and brushes. Hopefully, everyone was accommodated. I was also there, but then I was the one with the credit card.
It wasn’t quite a time to head to Festival Leisure Centre in Basildon for our dinner reservation. Since the Tescos mega store was just around the corner, we popped in there to swap out one of the items I bought earlier at the other Tescos in Pitsea. Jae had asked me to pick up some bottles of her favourite strawberry water, but she didn’t want the sugar-free variety, and I hadn’t paid sufficient attention to the label. Naturally, we went in with no intentions other than to swap out a single product but still came out with another full shopping trolley.
Finally, the timing was right to make our run through to Bas Vegas, as it’s sometimes known. I should point out that the term conjures up much more than is there. Other than a cinema, some restaurants and a handful of entertainment activities (minigolf, etc.), there’s little else there of any resemblance to Las Vegas. We were still a little early when we arrived, but we sat comfortably in the restaurant’s waiting area until Kerry and her clan rolled in, which they did pretty much on the dot at our reservation time. I’ll never know how Kerry and Nick manage to be so timely with four kids and a +1 for Thomas. Once we were seated, we could confirm definitively they had the all-important Yorkshire puddings on the menu today. Kelly had called earlier to confirm this, but seeing is believing. With that out the way, we could all relax and have a cordial meal with great company. The kids were all well-behaved, and everyone enjoyed themselves.
After the meal, I drove Jae back to Grandad’s before returning to Kerry’s, where she and I were the last to peel away to bed. We sat on the sofa, systematically solving all the world’s problems while binging on reality TV.
I was too tired to do any serious writing, but I managed to write up the notes for the day. The blog itself will need to be written tomorrow or while on the Ferry back to Holland (France).