The plan, such as it was, was to get over to the flat early to be available to receive the replacement furniture parts from MFI, have lunch with my sister, then pop off shopping for tiles and flooring for the kitchen.
I managed to sleep through my alarm, and my mother chose to check on me at 7.30... Coincidentally, the time I needed to leave the house to be sure of getting to the flat in time was 7.30.
I pointed out to my mother that there was no way I'd get to the flat in time for 8am, and she rather reluctantly offered to go over there herself, since she was already dressed and ready for the day... but then she spent another 15 minutes bumbling about.
Meanwhile, I did the bare bones of washing, literally threw on some clothes, and bolted out of the door... mere seconds after my mother.
We were fortunate enough with the train, despite missing one while walking to the station, and managed to arrive at the flat only a little after 8am. Thankfully, it turned out the delivery people had a hard time finding the flat (they phoned home from a location that sounded something like the right address, but was wrong in a couple of critical details, so my father attempted - three times - to give them directions, even though they had a GPS with the postcode tapped in.
They finally arrived sometime after 10am, delivered the new parts and took away the old and damaged. I put together then last drawer for the larger set of drawers and then went back to reading my book.
My father arrived to deal with the complicated processes like fitting the lighted rail to the wardrobe, connecting the two halves and adding the 'Space Genie' drawers (only to add them to the wrong places... and they're going to be very hard to remove), but the job was incomplete when we left for the day, for many reasons.
After having lunch (sandwiches at the flat... I cannot understand why my folks are so reluctant to try the restaurants all over the area) with my visiting sister, my mother and I headed off in search of a newly-opened tiling shop with which the kitchen people have a trade account. Since the directions he gave were aimed at drivers - we went by bus - they didn't help us very much, and we ended up heading in completely the wrong direction, only seeing signs pointing to the tile shop on our way back to the flat.
The driver of the bus on our return journey was possibly the grumpiest guy on the planet. One passenger asked him for directions to the shops, and he yelled that there were many shops along the stretch of road ahead, and that she should be more specific. She got off at the next stop. Shortly afterward, a guy got on carrying an ironing board, and the driver quibbled the safety of such an item. Two stops down the line, he stopped the bus and turned off the engine because he wanted the ironing board off his bus. After a brief argument, the owner of the ironing board disembarked (while other passengers protested on his behalf), calling the driver a racist.
By the time we got back to the flat - having stopped off at my optician to get the arms on my new glasses adjusted so they don't slip down my nose all the time - I had a nasty headache, which has persisted all evening.
We got home having missed Merlin, but it's repeated in the early hours, so we're aiming to record it. I hope this one is better than the first part.
Tomorrow, with any luck, I shall be heading to Milton Keynes for Collectormania...
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