After a terrible nightmare overnight where I never made it to Reading thanks to 'Bianca' from Eastenders and an overdue library DVD I ended up waking up relatively early paranoid it may come true and I may accidentally miss my day out.
I was quite nervous and excited as I haven't really been on a day trip with Edward to see a friend outside of London, so I worried I would forget to pack something. Sometime later and totally over-packed we headed out to Paddington via the post-office to post the faulty rat-trap back to the Amazon.
The train journey wasn't the most pleasant as it was packed with Reading festival goers some of which were rather unaware of their bulging rucksacks. I did however get a seat and spent the journey softly stroking the sleeping Edward's fluffy head.
We pulled into the Ding, it was SO nice to be back, this place has been many things to me over the years, but without fail is somewhere I have a good time, so well after a year of promising myself I was going to go it was really satisfying to finally be here!
We fought our way off the platform past all the be-wellied and be-tented ones and met Mr Chris by the door. We made a b-line for the festival-goer-free part of town and ended up by the canal where there was a small 'beach' that had obviously been set up for the summer. We were very tempted to let Edward to go mad in the sand, but decided that having a sand filled baby for the rest of the afternoon would be unwise, so we just sat and chatted and got given freebies by some girls from Lush :o)
After much debating and much indecisiveness on my part we eventually decided to go to New Orleans or was it Old Orleans? I doubt it's age makes much difference, it had table cloths you could draw on and that sold it to me! We had yummy foods and drew many beautiful pictures of our old characters from the role-play game we used to be in together where he was a Spaniard and I was cat highly skilled in the art of chocolate making....for no reason at all and for one day only Batman joined the party too!
We were tempted to take the table cloth at the end but decided a photo would sufficeI think it is fairly obvious which ones the talented Mr Chris drew and which ones I scrawled!
After main lunch we headed over to Krispy Kreme for pudding. I have seen these shops with increasing frequency and have heard many people rave about them. I must admit they were most tasty, by far the best doughnut I've had in years, and not too overpriced especially in comparison to any cakes from somewhere like Starbucks.
We then went to John Lewis to buy me some wool as my knitting needles arrived this morning. I am planning to join a knitting group so keep you eyes peeled for that forthcoming adventure. Afterwards and clearly in need of more wool, two balls not being enough for someone who can't actually knit, we decided to brave the ever so slightly creepy family run department store where they still write receipts by hand and send money round the building through weird vacuum powered tubes. It turned out to be much more affordable that John Lewis and is where all my future wool purchases shall be made...Mr Chris can't wait ;o)
It was actually a lot more sunny than this photo indicates.......hurrah for over packing though as it meant we had a blanket
We then decided to go up to the park and sit in the sunshine, which is what we did indeed do, and where we spent the rest of the afternoon chilling, chatting and trying to persuade Edward that leaves and Mr Chris's shoes did not constitute good food....I don't know you feed a baby one chip and a crumb of doughnut and they go junk-food craaaaaaaaazy!!
Everybody has a fetish for Mr Chris' shoes it would seem!It was finally time for Edward and I to head home and for Mr Chris to wander off to band practice, he walked us up to the station and we managed to get almost straight on a train, but not before I accidentally blasted poor Edward in the face with the hand dryer in the loo...ooops!! Quite funny though mwhaha!
All in all and utterly fantastic day and now I know how close it is, and how easy it is to get there, I'm sure I will once again become a regular visitor to the glorious glorious land of the Ding.
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