Day 11. Wednesday, 6^th June, 2007.

Today we drove to Wilton Shopping Village, which is 3 miles west of Salisbury. Before setting off I tried to work out why Jane (Zena’s GPS unit) was not charging when plugged into the cigarette lighter socket. Did a bit more checking at the end of the day and it seems that the socket is unpowered. The car is a no smoking car, and does not appear to contain the cigarette lighter itself. Perhaps the socket is deliberately unpowered? Seems unlikely as many people would want to charge their mobile phones, for example. Anyway, off to Wilton, Jane on battery power which gave out before we reached Salisbury. Rosemary navigated us successfully the rest of the way, so all was well. The Wilton Shopping Village is rather like Birkenhead point in a somewhat older setting, with the fast flowing River Wylye running through it and plenty of Mallard ducks about. Rosemary and Mum spent quite a few happy hours checking out each shop in detail. Between them they bought nuts, muesli, slip ons for Rosemary, and a trouser suit for Mum. At about 11.30 we had a cup of coffee in the indoors upstairs restaurant, and Mum and I shared a slice of treacle tart. I was interested to sample this as I haven’t eaten any treacle tart for a very long time. It’ll be a long time before I’ll want to sample it again!

Then more shopping while I read my library book –“A Fighting Man” by Gerald Seymour. Eventually they ran out of puff and joined me on the bench. Rosemary knew that I’d looked for replacement shoes in the shoe shop without success, and asked if I’d seen some ‘bargains’ in other shops. At the second place she led me to, we hit the jackpot and I bought a decent pair of trainers with leather uppers for 5 pounds (about A$12) which certainly was a bargain, much more so than any I’d seen in the shoe shop.

Then we started back, stopping briefly at the Salisbury Tesco – where Johathan works part time as a check out chick – so Mum could buy a fry pan, some recloseable airtight plastic containers, and look for, unsuccessfully, bias binding tape.

The evening meal was bangers and mash, but the bangers were a bit special. Old English Pork, Pork and leek, and Pork and apple made by John’s favourite butcher. Very nice too, though I didn’t have any mashed potato, preferring to stick with Irish Wheaten Bread which we’d bought at the Hythe Tesco on Monday. Followed by a fruit salad that Rosemary had prepared on which most of us poured cream and Framboise, a raspberry based liquer, which is a complements the cream wonderfully.

A little bit of cheese and off to bed. Relatively early, no stamina. Rosemary had a brief snooze before dinner – worn out by all the shopping, and lasted the meal, for the first time!