Here's a hint, oh mighty British mall owners.

If you put an open-plan coffeeshop type place in the middle of the mall, and allow people to smoke in it, then the whole mall will reek of cigarette smoke, and at least two people who had planned to spend money in it will get annoyed, go home, and shop online instead.

Not that the paltry amount that we would have spent would actually have helped the mall owners much. But still. It's the principle of the thing.

Anyhow, one way and another we've pretty much finished our Christmas and birthday shopping. (Except for the problem of what to get Bobby; I'm no further forward at all with that.) I'm very pleased with the things we chose; I think we've succeeded in getting things that everyone will like, without spending too much money.

Bobs has been on leave these past two days, and it's been fun, the two of us at home together with the children at school. Kind of like being teenagers again in our parents' houses, when the parents have gone away on vacation. The kids finished school today, though, so it'll be a different kind of fun for the next couple of weeks.

This weekend, I need to decide what we're going to do to celebrate my birthday (which is on Tuesday). I am torn between either going in to London to see a production of Tom's Midnight Garden, or going to Hampton Court Palace (the maze there is one of my favourite places in the world), or going sightseeing in Oxford (because I've never, ever, visited Oxford and it's not all that far from us.) Or maybe going ice-skating somewhere picturesque. Decisions, decisions!