Westfield didn’t go as well as it could….
Set off in all appropriate gear i.e. light clothing (indoors & can be quite warm), flat shoes (lots of walking), glasses to read all the prices on the tags (!), husband’s credit card (tee hee), fully charged mobile phone to keep in contact with niece and friend (avoids having to follow them around) & also, if you have the Kindle app, you can stop and have a coffee and read your book which saves having to lug a book or Kindle around.
Sister-in-law (s-i-l) and I were looking forward to some shopping time as most of our clothes shopping nowadays, we agreed, gets done on the internet.
Niece, her friend (both aged 12 yrs) and my youngest daughter hit Westfield running, us a little slower as we noted, even after a short car journey, we have started to feel a little stiff (aargh age)……straight into the new Urban Outfitterswhere we discovered there was a 20% discount on everything however young salesman only gave vouchers out to the ‘young’ and so starting to feel a little invisible!
Loved the clothes but not for me, blouses had no sleeves, not good for hiding the bingo wings, also I found trousers quite tight around the calves and had to admit to s-i-l that I had noticed a slight expansion in that area. Younger s-i-l looked rather ‘hot’ in her bright green pair, decided it was that 6 years that she had on me that means calves still slim and muffin top not appeared yet.
Then found Youngest Daughter who was looking good in very short shorts and equally short blouse which apparently “her budget did not run to” – what a surprise. To the till where we found a quite delicious young man, very easy on the eye. Had a little trouble reading the small print on the credit card reader so subtly put on reading glasses and then noticed young man asking daughter to fill in her email address for promotional updates. I pointed out that he should also be asking me as I was the one paying! He quickly responded that he thought the boxes for email addresses might be too small for me to see!! Cheeky b****r!! Retorted that he should not ignore the ‘grey pound’!

Our Personal shopper – in our dreams!

Found s-i-l and whipped her off for a bit of window shopping outsideGilly Hicks where they always have a very fit young man scantily clad, and we were not disappointed but felt we were too young to ask for our photo to be taken with him so surreptitiously whipped the iPhone out and took a photo. S-i-l emailed it to her husband telling him I had organised a personal shopper for her!
By this stage I felt clothes shopping was not for me as I was fed up with all that undressing and dressing in overheated changing rooms and unflattering mirrors (or maybe that is how I look). Anyway having seen my naked body one too many times I decided it was time for a coffee and Italian ice cream break and then onto Foyle’s bookshop where I didn’t get any feeling of being in the wrong shop, no sign of naked bodies to envy and lots of lovely books to lose oneself in……
Gave salesman bit of a nag that JoJo Moyes new book, Me Before You, was not on any display stand and could only be found on an alphabetical shelf – not acceptable as it is such a new book and is so good. Then went in search of Satchfield Hall by Pauline Barclay and this time a ‘no stock’……so I tactfully suggested that this omission was rectified quickly as this is an under-reviewed book that all women would love as, set around the time of WWII it tells the tale of a love story that goes terribly wrong. I cannot recommend either of these books highly enough. I also think that hight street book shops should be trying to find books that are not well publicised and deserve to be.
So it was home time and hit the internet to find all the books I wanted on Amazon! Sorry Foyle’s.