Day started off well by discovering that there was a bus from Epsom every 15 minutes - so pretty much as convenient as the train - and free (to us Surrey seniors), unlike the train. And on this day anyway, it also trumped driving.
Got to Kingston where our first stop was M&S where, after taking a preliminary look at dining room chairs, we made for the upstairs café where they sold us a very decent tea and toasted tea-cake, despite the fact that it was morning rather than afternoon. Light and airy café, neither crowded not noisy - much better than I had expected, not being all that familiar or all that keen on cafés in shops. This last being more by way of a male prejudice than a reasonably grounded opinion.
Past the quite good but far too noisy buskers and into Bentalls where we continued looking at dining room chairs, to the point of buying four of them. Nicely sold by a chap who was a proper big-store salesman who had started out at Whitleys in Queensway, a shop which he thought was a proper department store once again, having gone through various vicissitudes, including the possession of those wonderful tubes strung out all over the shop floor ceilings for the transmission of money - now only to be found in the larger smoking departments at Sainsbury's. Followed up with a visit to the excellent carpet department run by Kelaty, a far better department that reference 2 would suggest. A department to which we owe our front room carpet - a Chinese reproduction of a Persian design. The salesman was happy to show off & tell us all about a magnificent Persian carpet he had hanging up there, well out of our league at £30,000 or so. But there was stuff which was more in our range.
Almost shopped out at this point, so we took off for lunch at Cappadocia, where we lunched as well as I remember (see references 3 and 4). First visited maybe seven years ago, but I am sure we took FIL there at one point, so perhaps two previous visits altogether. The only catch was that I had forgotten what huge portions of meat you get with their döner - which comes on a plate, served on bread, rather than inside a sort of Cornish pasty of flat bread. A bit strong for my modest senior appetite for red meat, but luckily BH was on the salad and was able to help out.
Thus refreshed, we finally made it to Waitrose, where we found that there was still a cheese counter and there was still some Lincolnshire Poacher, although, by the looks of things, they might not be having it for much longer. We took half what they had left, feeling very care in the community because we had remembered to stand well back and allow the lady in front of us to take fully as long as she wanted about her various bits and bobs, quite possibly one of her few interactions with a person for the day. To be repaid by needing to be assisted twice by the cheerful attendant who minded the self-checkout machines.
And so to the bus home where we were interested in the window sign illustrated above., it being quite unclear how we were supposed to break the glass in question. What about EC directive 2008/2363, dedicated to the provision of shatter proof glass in vehicles dedicated to the movement of the public? Should the bus company run open days when they demonstrate how the deed is to be done, perhaps when a bus is upside down?
PS: we now know that Bentalls is part of the Fenwicks family; no longer proud to be independent. And we wonder whether Waitrose is marching down-market to counter the Aldi/Lidl attack. Has Waitrose, having been successful, now fallen victim to that capitalist disease of obsession with never-ending growth of market share? Will all our large supermarkets end up the dreary same, in the debris of the century of the common man?
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/disaster.html.
Reference 2: http://www.kelaty.com/.
Reference 3: http://www.cappadociarestaurant.co.uk/.
Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=cappadocia.
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