Weekend

We get a fair bit of junk mail here, usually tucked into one of the plants in the front garden. We tend to skim through it, since it includes supermarket sales and special offers, and then throw it out.

Late last week, one of the adverts we found was for a shop called 'Emporo' - from the photos it looked like a DIY/garden shop with a few clothes and even some food items. It was actually advertising a sale from July 12th, but said it was open on Saturdays, Sundays and Wednesdays (when most other shops are shut). We looked at the little map given, and could see that although not close to our house, it was not far from some church friends of ours live. And we were invited to lunch with these friends on Sunday.... so it seemed like a good opportunity to call into this shop and see what it was like.

It didn't look very impressive from outside. Indeed, without the advert we would never have noticed it. It turned out to be rather a muddle of stock: garden furniture outside (rather over-priced), and sections inside for electrical goods (very cheap, on the whole), clothes, food (very limited selection) and general tools and so on. We browsed around a bit, and did pick up a few things that seemed like excellent value. Tim found an electric sander, something he's been wanting for a while, to sand the piano stool he and Richard built a few months ago. Richard found some very inexpensive cable ties.

I don't think it's a place we'll be visiting often, but it was worth seeing. When we mentioned it to our friends, they called it the 'weekend shop' and said they didn't think the electrical goods were much good. So I was relieved this morning when Tim tried the sander and found it very effective.

Meanwhile, I had my hair cut shorter again this morning (the hairdresser is open this week after all, she just wasn't there when I passed the shop last week. She's closing for the last two weeks of August).

Richard left for the UK in the early hours of the morning, when I was fast asleep - he's been rushing around all weekend trying to get things finished and ready to go. His blog explains some of the frustrations and general detail of what he's been doing. Thankfully none of the cats succeeded in stowing away in his luggage, although Sophia had been trying to do so when he brought home some of the equipment he needed to take.

I've had quite a few emails from Daniel too - and as the Doulos is now berthed in South Africa, they have an ADSL connection to the Internet. That means he was finally able to send us a few pictures, which I've now posted on his blog. When he returns in a couple of weeks, he hopes to bring a CD with a lot of digital pictures from other people, as well as films of his own to be processed.