Animal

Right let's get this out of the way first.


As you may have heard, I went shopping in Oxford today. Had a bit of credit on my credit card to use up so decided the treat myself to a few new clothes. As is often the case the vast majority of my expenditure took place in Animal, apart from 2 shirts I bought in Debenhams. Why? Because it's good quality stuff, at good prices (i.e. not rip off Bicester Village prices or cheap tat from Primani). I like the designs, they suit me (most clothes don't sit well on me), they last a long time, and I just like the shop and the people in it. Always helpful to me, and go out of their way.

Anyway I bought 2 T-shirts, a laptop bag, a satchel bag, a new fleeces for me and decided to treat Claire as well to a new fleece, plus the above pictured boxers. I am wearing the black pair as I type should you wish to picture it. Now all well and good, unfortunately when I got home I discovered that I'd somehow mislaid the 2 T-shirts.

Decied to phone the store and lo and behold somehow I had left them on the counter. I asked if they could keep them for me until I could next come in (not possible that often due to kids and other commitments), but I was most pleased when the assistant said she lived in Bicester, asked me my address and said she would drop them in on her way home tonight. Now how often do you get service like that?

Had a £20 WHSmith voucher but could not find anything to spend it on. The place has really gone downhill. Anything decent it used to sell has been delisted, it's all overpriced ink cartridges, stationery and books these days. Did manage to get some nice smelly cheese from the market though and still managing to pass myself off as a student to get discounts in the market so all good.

Managed to fit in a little mercy dash to the cake shp to get something for Bestie, so that gave me an excuse to go in the covered market. You know what I like about that place the most? The smell of it, takes me back to shopping with my gran in their during the seventies. It's never changed.

This Saturday I am doing my first disco for primary school age children for a few years. I have done quite a few in the 11-14 year old range. I did a few for Primary School children a few years ago which went OK, but Ollie was only a baby then and I didn't feel I had enough experience of dealing with children that age at the time. Now it's different, plus having spent two weeks in an Ibiza resort last year where there was a children's disco every night with various games I've got a pretty good idea what to do.

It's too good an opportunity to miss, as well, because I am constantly in contact with other parents now through school etc, I am constantly being asked if I do children's parties and the amount of offers are too good to waste.

Although I'm used to gettting £200-£250 for a Saturday night these days that's often for up to 5 hours which involves leaving the house before 6pm and not getting home until 1am. Now I will be looking at half that for a two or three hour kids party, but the hours are much more sociable and shorter. A 2 hour kids disco on a Saturday when I have nothing else on from 4-6pm is going to be considerably less challenging than some of  these long nights. And considerably more rewarding too, as my children have grown I have realised that I got on really well with kids. They are also easy to get on the dancefloor as well, they don't take 8 pints and 4 hours to get up and then moan because the disco ends half an hour after they had enough drink to start enjoying themselves.

I'm offering a few little extras too like gift certificates to give out to winning children for winning games like musical statues and such like. Never one to miss a trick I've put my company name and website address on these so when the children go home and proudly show mummy and daddy what they won and what a good time they had and they want a party of their own, ah, that's handy, there's my address.

I am going to stop now as this keyboard is driving me crazy, keeps freezing as I type, so half the sentence appears all in one go seconds later. Now I am used to looking at the screen as I type and correcting typos "live" as I type but that's not happening, so this is probably riddled with errors. I've already had the wrath of the Charcoal Sprite for committing the cardinal sin of mis-spelling Jeffery, so I am going to try a re-boot now and see if that fixes it.

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Laters...

Jason x x