We tried to go to the bank this morning, only - in what should by now have been an unsurprising turn of events for us - it was shut. And it wasn't that we'd arrived too late, or too early - no, it seems that the bank in Reigate simply doesn't open at all on a Saturday morning. Bobby spent some time gnashing his teeth and wailing, but I felt rather calm and unsurprised about it all. I think I must be adjusting to living here.

Since the Rotarians were having a used-book sale right outside the (closed) bank, we spent a little time browsing there, and I was happy to find a copy of The Tree That Sat Down for the kids. The same edition that I'd had as a child. And for only 10p. So Bobby goes - here, I've got it - and hands me a coin, which I hand over to horsey upmarket looking Rotarian lady. She pauses momentarily before taking it and her eyebrows raise a tiny fraction of a millimetre. I turn away, mentally rewinding the interaction, and realise - shit! Bobby handed me a 5p coin, not a 10p! Gah! Now I look freakishly cheap - who gives half the price of an already almost-free book to nice charity people? Incompetent people who still haven't figured out the currency in their new country, that's who; incompetent people who then have to trudge back to horsey lady and sheepishly hand over another 5p plus a random assortment of coins to make up for the original blunder, while mumbling incoherently about mistakes and husbands.

Still, I think the girls will enjoy the book. Pity Steve's totally past that age.

And this afternoon, after Stephen had finished slaving away in the butcher's shop, we drove down to Brighton.



Here are some more of the pictures :

A view of the beach. I love the quality of the light in this one.
Good view of the pebbles in this one. This is not ideal sand-castle building territory.
But it's okay for doing cartwheels.
Me and the girls.
Lucky no-one slipped here.
The funfair on the pier from a distance. Looks very science-fictiony somehow.
We really wanted to go on the helter-skelter, but it was closed.
The pier from closer. The sun came out for this shot so it looks less surreal.
One could buy all kinds of food from various stalls, including (shudder) jellied eels and
very oddly - biltong. Yes, there's a Biltong Hut on Brighton Pier. You can buy Zoo biscuits and Romany Creams and Pronutro,as well as biltong and dried wors. And they also had a poster up advertising a Rodriguez concert in London next weekend; toying with the idea of going. It would be really fun.
The rides at the funfair seemed rather rickety and meccano-like. The rollercoaster...
and the water ride. Looks like something you might rig up in the bath-tub.

We left when the sun started going down and we got hungry; we need to pinch pennies at the moment, if not till they scream then at least till they whimper and beg us to stop, so eating out wasn't an option.

All in all, a good day. And we still have another whole day of weekend left.