Cinderella

Here is a tiny admission - I am a girl who doesn't particularly like shoe shopping, or shoes. I far prefer shopping for other things; such as clothes, bags, books, or even food. Like Cinderella, it's difficult to get shoes that fit perfectly. Shoe shopping also requires the attendance of a shop assistant, whereas I prefer to shop in peace. This means that I don't own many pairs of shoes, and mainly wear a pair of black boots. But these boots are now scuffed, and are falling apart. In fact, the heel fell off last week, and someone I don't even know at work commented on the state of them, so I felt I should get some more!

I bought some shoes in France the other week (right), but I haven't worn them out as they still hurt. So after my colleague's comment on Wednesday, I decided there was no choice, I had to buy another pair. After a lot of shopping around today, I ended up with a second pair of work shoes (left). Now, I have my work shoes but I still need others... new boots, summer shoes (e.g. sandals/flip-flops) and trainers for the weekends. It is never-ending!

First Christmas

Since we have been together, Veggie Hubby and I have spent four Christmases on different sides of the Atlantic ocean. Every Christmas, he would ring me at 9am in the morning (3am his time) to wish me Happy Christmas! Last Christmas was the first we spent together. However, we didn't have the chance to get our own decorations because we didn't even have a home - in the month running up to Christmas we were living in B&Bs (the thought brings back bad memories!). We had only been living our flat for 10 days, and barely had the chance to even unpack, let alone think about getting decorations, when we left England to go to Canada for Christmas.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that this Christmas is our first opportunity to buy a tree and decorations. We spent this weekend getting some, which was fun! Here are some of our new decorations. So perhaps we are slightly early in putting up our tree, but we wanted to make the most of spending Christmas together. We can really appreciate it, unlike last year when we couldn't, as were living in someone else's house, and only had one small decoration.

Retail therapy

I haven't blogged for a little while as work (and Strictly Come Dancing!) is taking over my life... yes, weekends too :-( Ah well, the deadline is next week so it's nearly over now. Anyway, today I did a little retail therapy and bought myself a Radley bag. I've been wanting one for ages, and today seemed like the right day. My current bag (which isn't that old, just a few months) is already falling apart so I thought I'd better invest in a higher quality bag, and get one I really wanted. VeggieHubby always made me feel guilty about purchasing a Radley bag as they are made of leather, but this one only has a small amount of leather in it. I just love the little Radley dog.

The boring up-market town where I live

I have to say that I am living in a very boring town. It is expensive too - probably because it is near to London but still a nice quiet town by the Thames, which initially sounded appealing. However, everything here is not quite as rosy as it seemed at first...

1. It does not have any big shops. Mainly restaurants, pubs and expensive boutiques.
2. It does have some shops that could be potentially good, such as M&S Simply Food. However, they are very small outlets, and the branch here has even less choice than the one at Reading station. Fab. It reminds me of Tescos which have relaunched in America as 'Fresh & Easy' with very small branches, pretending to be like a local shop rather than the big monster that it really is. The lady running a B&B that I stayed in here said that this is how they like it here, with small shops, but if the shop is M&S acting like a small shop with nothing in it except for a few ready meals, then what is the point?
3. The only food shops here are M&S, Sainsbury's (both tiny) and Waitrose. There are no cheaper shops like Tescos or Asda. I wouldn't mind so much if there were independent shops instead, but there aren't... (except for a fishmongers, but this is leaving the high street soon due to the extortionate price of renting the shop. A so-called 'Sultan' bought many of the shops here, charges a lot, and forces out local business).
4. There is no bookshop here, the biggest sin according to my husband. Again because the prices of renting shops here are too high for local businesses. There was one until recently, but this became a Costa Coffee.
5. There is no post-office either for the same reason, the high street post-office had to close down. However, a small one has recently opened up in a temporary hut in a car-park.
6. It is very expensive- for nothing, except its reputation. Despite this, there was a theft the other week at building site over the road from us, and this week it was discovered that a former war lord has been living here.
7. The library, whilst the librarians are very welcoming, does not have much stock.
8. It does not have good public transport links. A slow train leaves the town every hour. You cannot even get directly to London from here.
9. It is an absolute nightmare to get to Heathrow by train (or any airport, or anywhere for that matter!) from here, involving four changes and having to carry suitcases over footbridges at each station, despite being able to hear and see planes travel over-head all of the time.
10. The roads are very narrow, with lots of cars parked at either side, which makes it a difficult place to drive around.

What makes all of this worse for us personally is that we no longer have any reason to be here, and it is further away from my family than I was before I re-located to this dead town.