I can feel that Lois is getting a bit "stir crazy" - we haven't been out of the house for a few days, what with the bad weather and with our street being blocked by road diggers and builders and all. And although staying in doesn't bother me as much, I know Lois really doesn't like it.
But where should we go?
As it happens, Virgin Media have reminded me this morning that I'm paying for two of their phones simultaneously at the moment, my new one and my old one - yikes! So Lois and I decide to drive the 3 miles over to Hanley Swan post office to hand the old phone over to Royal Mail. Let's hope it arrives with Virgin tomorrow, and I can cut my phone bill by half, which will be nice!
However, to make our visit to the post office today even more productive, I decide, as soon as I've had my morning porridge, to write all my UK Christmas cards by mid-morning: I've already done my overseas list. Lois and I have a long list of card addressees, and, by tradition, I only do some of them - my relatives or friends - and Lois does the rest. Makes sense to us!
There's a potential problem with Christmas cards this year. A lot of addressees will be surprised to find out that, after 36 years, we decided to move from Cheltenham to Malvern, and they may be expecting a long newsy letter of explanation. I decide to avoid that, however, because we have a hundred people to send to - and it wouldn't be practical. That's what I say, anyhow! Call me a selfish, uncaring swine if you like haha!
Hanley Swan Post Office
This post office, a typical country post office, is a good discovery for us, because it's also the Village Stores, so we pick up some groceries at the same time.
Lois likes nothing better than to browse a food store. Whereas I always go into such places armed with a shopping list and just tick all the items off one by one and don't look at anything else, Lois most of all likes to see everything that the store is selling, whether she needs to buy it or not, and I can see her point of view.
After our visit to the post office, we decide to extend this morning's outing and upgrade it to a "familiarisation tour" of our new surroundings. So we drive another 3 miles and drop in at nearby Clive's Fruit Farm, just outside Upton-upon-Severn: a store which not only stocks loads of fresh produce but also has a proper butcher. You should have seen Lois's face light up - she's clearly in paradise now: and we come away with a bunch of joints of meat, plus Scotch eggs and minted lamb burgers, all from local farms. Yum yum !!!! What's not to like?
we visit Clive's Fruit Farm, near Upton-upon-Severn
There's even an attractively spacious chicken coop by the car park, where 3 enormous cockerels are lording it over a couple of dozen hens.
we watch the hens and cockerels in Clive's hen coop
the meat counter at Clive's Fruit Farm
So all in all it's been a good morning for us, because we like to be able to buy fresh local produce and meat from local farmers, and we weren't sure where in Malvern we needed to go to get that kind of stuff. Up till now we've pretty much been eating what we've found in the local supermarkets.
13:00 We drive back to Malvern, only to find that the road we live on is impassable again, with a bunch of mechanical diggers digging holes and laying cables, piping etc. So we're forced to park round the corner and lug the shopping back home over the mud-drenched pavement. What a madness it all is!!!
The builders have promised us that all this road work will be finished by the end of Friday. Let's hope they're not just stringing us along!
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