Blog - Day With Zoë in Slough and Windsor (2008-08-23)

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Day With Zoë in Slough and Windsor (2008-08-23)

Category: Diary. Posted: 2008-09-10 07:17:21 BST.

Despite going to bed late, I woke up at about half-seven. Zoë woke up shortly afterwards, but went back to bed. I kept myself occupied while waiting for her to wake up again by drinking tea, checking my e-mail, updating my blog, and surfing t'internet. Once we'd eaten breakfast, we drove to Slough Scuba to collect my cylinders. Unfortunately, Slough Scuba still didn't have any red logbooks.

Zoë was thinking about buying a bike, so we stopped in Slough on the way back. After spending about 10-15 minutes trying to find a parking space in the Tesco car park, we parked in the station car park, which only cost two quid for the whole day. If I'd known it was this cheap, I'd have suggested going straight there. Without any change, we used the ticket by mobile feature. It was a little bit difficult, because I didn't know Zoë's car's details, and she was losing her voice, so the voice recognition software would be unlikely to understand her. Still, we got there eventually. Unfortunately, Zoë's car was now linked to my mobile. I didn't really think that through.

Feeling a bit hungry and thirsty, we popped into Krispey Kreme for a cuppa, and a doughnut. For the first time, I managed to use my WavePay card for buying something other than a £1.30 cup of tea. The woman at the checkout didn't know how to use the machine, so asked her colleague. She didn't understand, and it almost got to the point where I had to tell them how to use it!

We then went to Stows Cycles, so that Zoë could look at the bikes. The bloke there was, as always, very helpful, and even let her have a ride around in the car park. She hadn't ridden for years, but still remembered how (it's just like riding a bike!). Armed with the brochures, we went into The Moon and Spoon to have lunch, and a drink, and discuss whether to buy the bike or not. Zoë had been very tempted in the shop, but decided that she ought to think about it some more before buying it. I liked the idea of cycling into Windsor together on Monday, but didn't think it was going to happen.

We then went into Tesco to buy a pint of milk. I walked past a short queue, and Zoë shouted at me. Unfortunately, with her sore throat, I didn't hear her, so continued walking. I should pay more attention. Anyway, we bought the milk, and then drove home. At home, Zoë started surfing t'internet to look for bike shops in Southampton, but didn't have much success. After that, she was feeling a bit tired, so went for a quick kip, while I drank tea, and watched BBC News 24.

I woke Zoë up a little bit late, so we had to walk fairly quickly to the train station. I was not impressed to see that the credit card reader was faulty yet again, but we had enough change for a Permit to Travel. At Slough, we had time to get proper tickets, but the bloke whose job it was to issue tickets was chatting on his mobile, and the bloke whose job it was to let us out wouldn't let us through to the ticket office because we didn't have tickets. Just as I was about to start complaining, he realised how stupid he was being, and let us through. As well as buying tickets for today, we bought tickets for our trip tomorrow as well. The bloke at the counter took ages to figure things out, but got there eventually.

In Windsor, we went for a Thai meal. I had one bottle of lager, but managed to almost stick to my rule of not drinking bottled lager in restaurants. Afterwards, we went for a quickie at the Royal Oak, before going to Windsor Theatre Royal to watch Daisy Pulls it Off. This was one of the shows that I had tried to convince Gimmer to go to, but he didn't fancy it. It was a pretty good performance, with plenty of totty. We had time for another quickie at the Royal Oak during the interval, but caught the train straight back after the show had finished. There was no sign of the train that we wanted to catch (it was clearly shown on the paper timetables, but not mentioned anywhere on the computer displays), so we caught the 81 bus back instead (I'll be complaining about that to First Great Western, don't you worry!). Two drunks got on the bus half-way to Langley, which was quite amusing.

We checked the train times before going to bed. We might have been able to get away catching the 07:45, but thought that it was cutting it a bit fine, so decided to catch the earlier train, which was at 06:45! Knowing we had to get up early, we didn't stay up too late, but Zoë asked me to find out what the weather forecast for Paris is. I checked, and found out that it was forecast to rain. Gimmeration - the whole point of booking right at the last minute was to base our choice of destination on the weather forecast!

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