:: weekend stuff

Another lovely weekend flies by, but at least this time I accomplished a few things.

1. Weeded the front garden. It was a mess. Now it's at least tidy.

2. Did some fruitful fiddling on the computer -- I'm still having problems with the USB connection (for the camera and scanner), but I may have sorted it out, with the help of the wonderful forums on the PC Advisor website. It's quite a good magazine too. I'm considering subscribing, but suspect the mag wouldn't fit through the letter slot and I hate being woken up by the postie dring-dringing on the door.

3. Posted Pinky's shopping to her. Lovely shoes, she has such good taste!

4. Got my hair done -- badly-needed trim and colour job. It's lovely to sit there sipping coffee and flipping through the latest Marie Claire. It would be a lot cheaper to buy the mag and sit in a cafe I guess, but then I wouldn't get Sandy's wonderful scalp massage.

Not a very long list, is it? Very enjoyable though. And I got some cheap videos at HMV's sale -- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Magnolia and The Man Who Wasn't There -- so that took up some time. The last one was the only one I hadn't seen before, so I watched that, and I've also watched half of Crouching Tiger, one of my all-time favourite movies. It's the sort of film you have to see on the big screen though -- the fight scenes are stunning.

I bought the videos during an abortive expedition to John Lewis to look at beds. I was mildly interested in this bed, which I'd seen in a brochure. But the Edinburgh branch is in the throes of a huge redesign and the furniture dept has been shunted off to a dim corner where they seemed to have mainly damaged stock and £700 mattresses. It was also horribly busy & I couldn't find anyone to serve me.

In the kitchenware department I looked at coffee makers. I want a filter coffee machine, but one that takes a paper filter. None of the coffee makers they had use paper filters, they have permanent nylon filters. I prefer paper-filtered coffee partly for the taste, but mainly because I've noticed that if I drink other kinds -- instant, percolated, plunger -- I get arthritic pains in my hips. With filtered coffee I don't have a problem. Some studies have noted a link between coffee, even decaffeinated coffee, and arthritis, so it's not just my imagination. I'll have to stick to my little plastic filter cup though, it seems.

So then I went back to the handbag department, where I had earlier found The Perfect Handbag. Perfect apart from the price tag -- £140. I almost put down my credit card, it was a close thing. Soft, buttery leather, mmmmm, stylish plain exterior with only one square buckle for decoration, comfortable strap. Sturdy zip, no horrid magnetised clip to wipe your cards. Lovely. Sigh. By my third visit (well, it was on the way!) the staff were started to ostentatiously tidy the bags next to me.

So I went and got cheap videos instead. And went home and had a filter coffee. And slept in my ricketty old bed. Harrumph.