A shopping trip and school reunion combined? This should be fun……..
Scene 1. ‘Yes, I’ll definitely come to the school reunion’ says I, ‘what’s the dress code’ says I, ‘black and gold’ says they, ‘fab’ says I……….
Scene 2. ‘Oh my god, it’s tonight’ says I, ‘oh my god, I’ve got nothing gold to wear’, says I, ‘aaarrrggghhh, I’ve got to go shopping’ says I (I means we, so P not happy 🙄)
Where to go? Asked P for his thoughts as we were driving to Cardiff on the M4, his answer (and I kid you not honestly) was “we’ve just passed the services, don’t they sell clothes there?” 😳 was my reply……
After a small ahem ‘discussion’ , we drove to the nearest retail park as a compromise seeing as P HATES shopping (unless it’s to Aldis and he’s got a list…..). Asda had good wide aisles but no gold tops, Next had the most perfect gold top but awful, really narrow aisles. After getting trapped between a row of coats and ponchos in my powerchair, I managed to find the changing rooms. Met by a lovely lady, she unlocked the disabled changing room for us. Good marks here Next, good size, plenty of room, loads of grab rails and a good mirror, well done! Shame your aisles are so narrow and hard to manoeuvre. Fab staff though, helpful and not at all patronising so full marks there too!
Had a good chat at the check out with the girl serving me, she wished a good night out and off we went, sparkly top in hand (and off to Asda for some cheaper matching jewellery, which we found easily!)
Back home with only hours to go, need all the time I’ve got cos getting ready on crutches and a wheelchair ain’t easy you know, plus, this long curly hair needs a lot of persuasion (hairdryer, Frizzease, GHD’s, Moroccan oil to finish and loads of Elnet to keep it there!) Needless to say this all takes time and as usual, I’m not happy with the result but no more time to fuss, the struggle to get dressed has to commence. With the usual help from P, the underwear, trousers and shoes are on, one new shiny gold top is on along with the equally shiny jewellery and its time to go!
We arrived at the golf club and saw there was a ramp from the car park, great. Got to the front door and as usual there were steps surrounding it. Two seconds of panic were then dissolved by a lovely lady who shouted out ‘come this way love, we’ve got you a ramp!’ Off to the side entrance I went with P behind me, found the ramp, saw how steep it was and thought to myself ‘OK, let’s give it a go’. I turned to P, his face was saying ‘you’ll never get up there’ but his voice said ‘go on, I’ll be behind you just in case it tips over’. Ok, speed turned up on the chair to ensure sufficient oomph to get up the ramp and up I went. (The only problem with doing this, you’re too busy trying to hang on to the chair and steer at the same time to turn the ‘oomph’ down at the top of the ramp so usually I end up flying off the end and landing painfully with a very unladylike bump!) This inevitably happened as per usual but I wasn’t expecting the whole bar full of people to be watching! There’s nothing like landing into somewhere with a thud with P clinging onto the back of the chair with the unavoidable ‘ow, s#*t that hurt!’ coming out of your mouth to make a girl look classy……
Any hoo, the night was amazing, catching up with old friends and even more amazing was the fact that virtually everybody looked EXACTLY the same as they did in school!! How fantastic! A brilliant evening of friendships reignited, hours of reminiscing and promises to stay in touch this time. It was packed with fun and a more than a few frolics, well worth the shopping trip, even if P did think that a plastic mac and two matching cardigans at the service station equalled a women’s fashion shop……… 😖
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