So after another crappy nights sleep it was up early-ish to set off to meet my very good friend, and podcast co-host, Michelle for a day of shopping.
Michelle lives about 90 miles away from me and although we talk all the time we have not been able to see each other since August of last year. So with us both working in education, and both being on our respective 'half term' breaks, we grabbed the opportunity to meet up.
Halfway between us is the city of Sheffield and luckily for us they have a giant out-of-town shopping mall called Meadowhall. So me and Molly jumped in the car and headed north for some much needed retail therapy.
We had a lovely time just catching up while we shopped. We visited the Disney Store (of course!)...
...as well as few other favourites, and managed to come away with shorts, jeans, t-shirts, tops and shoes between the three of us. We stopped for a coffee, at Michelle's favourite coffee retailer, and simply enjoyed being out and about doing something close to normal.
Well, I say normal, but of course we had to wear masks, there was a one-way system around the mall and all the shops had 'red' or 'green' signals outside to indicate whether you could enter or not. Some shops and services even had queue areas into the walkway areas to ensure that there was no over crowding.
So there we sat in the middle of one of the walkways at our coffee shop of choice, without masks while everyone around us wandered about with masks on - how ridiculous! As we walked around with our masks on we could smell the coffee, we could smell the cookies, we could smell the donuts and we could smell the perfume oozing out of Lush (a beauty product retailer) as normal...so if we could smell all of that through our masks...exactly what are the masks protecting us from? Aerosols are smaller than the smells we can detect so it's common sense that if we can smell something then the aerosols can get through as well...isn't it common sense??
Now some of the changes I do actually quite like. The one-way system around the mall definitely made walking around a lot easier and the 'social distancing' between tables at the coffee shop was greatly appreciated; I don't want to be sat overtly close to people I don't know at the best of times (covid or no covid) so having a bit of extra space was to my liking!
After a few hours of shopping it was time to head home so we said our goodbyes to Michelle and gave her a big hug with the promise to meet up sooner rather than later!
Once home it was time to have a coffee and chill for a few minutes before scanning more photographs from our past with the Photomyne app. I have now managed to work my way through our summer holidays of 1988!
Late afternoon I took Molly out for another drive and we did the same route we have done the past few days. I have to say she is doing really well and, as I said to her when we arrived home, today was probably the most comfortable that I have felt with her driving. Her skill set is really improving and I am so very proud of her.
While Molly and I went for a drive Simon headed down 'our gym' and we were then able to call an end to our day...a very productive day.
Here's to good friends, meet-ups, shopping and coffee - simply pleasures that mean so much.
See you tomorrow.
xx
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