Norwich, we've missed you!

It seems unbelievable that for 5 years almost to the day, I drove in to Norwich every day for work - the 22 or so miles from my home in North Norfolk. Then in the past year, I've been 4 times that I can recall, not counting driving through. So today was a big day. We were all quite excited! So much so that I was awake at 6 and got up at 6.30 to get washing on, dishwasher switched on, and last nights washing up cleared away.

We wanted to leave at 8ish as we expected the city to be busy, especially the car parks. We had some specific plans, so parked at Magdalen Street car park and walked up past all the lovely junky, second hand and charity shops that I love and have missed so much. Not stopping today though. Very lucky with the weather, our first stop a camera shop on Timber Hill. Unfortunately they didn't have the zoom lens that Henry was after. So we stopped and had a pricy tea/coffee and cake breakfast in a small continental style cafe which had tables outside where we could sit. Then, after a fruitless search for a Carphone Warehouse we discovered all independent shops had be closed last March. Hmmm. We had walked over to Riverside to discover that. So while there, Hobbycraft was a must, and relieved me of £45 in about 15 minutes!!

We located another camera shop and phone shop on an out of town complex so walked back to the car via the Riverside walk, and cathedral. Mollie said she had never seen Pulls Ferry, and said to me 'I thought it was Paul's Ferry, that's what you always call it'- I laughed - is my north London accent that bad?!

Queues outside every shop, but we got into pcworld quite quickly, and Mollie sorted out upgrading her phone. I had time to kill, and to cut a long story short, found my self the pround owner of a new laptop. It's a good job I'm not in the city every day! Jon and Henry went to Wex and Henry got his lens. He is very happy!

From there it was Notcutts for big pots, then on to the archery shop where Henry bought himself 8 new arrows for his bow, while I sat in the car and watched the Duke's funeral on my phone. Luckily my data ran out just as it ended and they returned to the studio. Buying arrows is a long process (he has to be measured to get the right length, and then they put them together). An hour later we were heading home.

Henry has taken a couple of photos of birds in the garden. I've taken my laptop out of its box, but put it back again. I'm too tired to tackle it today! The excitement of the spending has been too much for me! Tomorrow is soon enough.

A film now...if I stay awake.