A better day

I cycled through the woods to Ashtead Station again. 

I'm sorry to see how the trees are being thinned out on Epsom Common. Apparently, they are deliberately thinning the trees for the sake of 'biodiversity'. The Epsom Common Association leaflet says that  'a century ago [the common] was mostly open heath and rough grassland' - which is probably true but I find woods far more interesting, and also the trees protect more from the sun, the wind, and even to some extent the rain. 

Near Ashtead Station is a charity shop, and I found a board book for Emily there. It's quite a complicated one, with a set of shapes to put into the right places in the book, and it was still sealed in its original packaging. It was priced at £4.95. When I went to pay, the chap behind the counter went off to talk to a colleague and came back and told me it was £1! It hadn't been their sticker on it. The money goes to charity, so I said, 'Well I was expecting to pay the fiver, so just take that anyway'. They wouldn't do that, or even take the extra as a donation, so after a bit of arguing back and forth, they let me pay them £3 for it. 

I thought it was a bargain, and they thought I'd overpaid, so we were all well pleased!