July 4th, 2006

Today, being Independance Day, the choice for our evening was left up to Kelly. As such, with the Harrods sale underway, her choice was to trundle over there and check out the 'bargains'. As a bit of a surprise we had been out at lunchtime to return the sorry excuse for an MP3 player we had purchased in February - and replace it with the new model Sony one that just hit the shelves. A pink one. I spend some time in the aftenoon filling (well - 30% full) with all the songs I'd been collecting for Kelly over the last year - so she was able to have a quick spin through these on the long hot bus and tube ride to Kensington.

Harrods (for those of you who don't know) is a grand old British department store, which seems to have been the first retailer to introduce the concept of charging the rich, vain, and pompous (and, of course, tourists) ludicrous amounts of money for buying things they could buy anywhere else at a fraction of the cost. Kelly's enthusiasm for 'picking up a bargain' quickly waned as she realised that - even at 75% off - some items were still ridiculously expensive (Strawberries, anyone? £2 ($3) EACH... corduroy pocketbooks for £350 ($500)...I think not...) We headed for the bedding department - the intended focus of our visit - but the style we were going for didn't exist in the right size for our bed. We despondantly headed for the exit (after finding that the 'stationary department' was mostly 'casino requisites' and fountain pens for $25,000) only to find (to Kelly's glee) the Origins counter, with some quite surprising bargains. Needless to say Kelly left the store a little brighter in mood (and I was £27 lighter).

A short tube ride later we found ourself on the outskirts of Chinatown - Kelly had her choice of restaurant and of course it had to be Vietnamese (the same restaurant we visitied with Lester some weeks ago). Duly sated we made our weary way home, happy in the knowledge that, whilst not being 'Harrods people' - we still know good food.