Beguiling Romford

I got in the bus to go to Romford this morning and nearly fainted.
In the summer the trip had cost £1.10. This morning it cost £2!

Apparently there is a logical explanation for this, although it is well known that the French are supposed to have the monopoly on logic... Transport for London are aiming to reduce the use of cash on buses so penalise those who don't have an Oyster card. The first thing I thus did on arriving in Romford was to go to a newsagent's and buy an Oyster card. The trip now costs me a mere £1.

I was able to enjoy the delights of Romford happy in the knowledge that it wasn't costing me an arm and a leg to do so. Having been thrown off the bus outside the railway station because it had a flat tyre, we sauntered down the main road in the direction of The Brewery. This might sound like a highly suspect activity to do with children, but fear not, it is not a den of beery iniquity. It is a shopping centre built on the site of a former brewery (Romford Bitter).

On our way we popped into 4 charity shops but I found the prices rather high and bought nothing. When you can buy a pair of new trousers in Primark for a fiver, why pay £3.50 for a secondhand stained pair?

After a foray into Sainsbury's for tea and cheap Christmas choccy selections for the boys, we headed to a wonderful emporium, 'Boundary Mills'. It is a factory outlet of designer labels at silly prices. I found some wonderfully outlandish clothes to try on and was quite sad one of the tops was too badly made to sit properly, so just bought some Planet cutoff trousers for £9, original price £90, and some socks.

We would have gone to Primark next but it was by this time 12.50 and stomachs were rumbling, so we caught the bus home, consoling our appetites by munching on some cinema popcorn in a thoroughly decadent manner (eating in public, on the bus).

Tomorrow, the fun-filled programme for the day must be a return bus ride to do Primark, Clark's shoes and the optician. I can barely contain my excitement...