A Grand Day Out

Probably died of boredom, the lucky bastard

Sunday, and to one of those out-of-town shopping villages where you see all the latest designer labels, have a spot to eat, then go home clutching the results of your shopping therapy. Not so much. We bought socks and a packet of biscuits.

This one was decidedly low-rent, with all the discount shoes, discount clothes and discount everything you could ever want to see. Add this to the fact that it was next door to the local Big Boot Sale, and the whole place was crawling with middle-aged men with trousers held up with comedy braces, and small children tired and bored out of their skulls. And me. Me judging everybody and everything, because I am middle class and in my forties and that is what I do these days.

We thought it would be a nice place to go while returning some mail order things without having to pay for the postage. We might as well have gone to Basingstoke.

At least there was the restaurant. The man doing the carvery was so slow (one customer every ten minutes, we reckoned) I plumped for the jacket potato with a handful (literally) of salad, and the smallest spoon of coleslaw you ever saw in your life, served by a staff member whose "Enjoy your meal" actually came out as "Kill me now". Then to a seat under a speaker playing commercial music radio, in full view of the establishment's priceless collection of dead flies on the windowsill.

I am lucky that I have a partner who shares my views of the enforced-happiness school of retail, and we fled.

Would visit again, but only as the pilot of an attack helicopter loaded with bunker-busting ordinance.

That was Sunday.

Farnham, you've let me down. You're not supposed to be shit.