What a day!

I love Next for their children clothings (so pretty and cute!) and I splurge when it comes to their sales. They usually have 2 big sales each year (summer and winter) with some 1 or 2 days mid-season sale in between. Most of the time, I got to know about them by chance. However, I missed the past 2 post-Christmas sales as I was in Singapore. So for the past year, I only managed to go to one mid-season sale which I didn't know about in advance. I remember they usually have a sale in March and perhaps it's the shopaholic's hunch, I checked their website last night and found out (much to my delight) that they are holding a sale this weekend. Mind you their sales usually start at 5am. Yes, you read it right. 5AM. It sounds crazy but everytime I reached the store about 2 hours after the opening, people were already leaving with big bags of shopping. The racks get cleared very quickly. You see these shoppers just grabbing hangers after hangers of apparels and stuffing them into bags that were handed out at the entrance. It is handy when they have a 28 days return policy. So you just take whatever you fancy and bring back whatever you changed your mind on.

Today's sale started at 7am. I reached the store at 6.55am and a queue of about 50m had formed. By the time the store opened, it had snaked all the way back by another 50m. Who says only women are shopaholics? There were men waiting for the shop to open too! I didn't get distracted by the ladies clothing at the entrance. I knew what I wanted and walked straight to the back of the store where the children clothing are located. I was surprised by the quantity of clothing on offer. Not much, unlike the ones I had been to. Many people were complaining. Even the staff said they were surprised too. I'm sure by mid-day, most of the items would be gone. My haul? I still managed to find some pretty tops, skirts and dresses for both girls in time for spring and summer. The prices were reduced by at least 50%. I didn't even have to wait at the till. There wasn't even a queue. Strange sight during a sale at Next.

While I was at the store, Adrian rang me and told me someone we know very well had commited a crime and was sentenced to 25 years in jail and be given 15 strokes of cane. He said he would tell me when I return home. I felt very disturbed after the phonecall. Who? What happened? 25 years in jail plus 15 strokes of cane?! I could only think of the people we know from our uni days. Faces went through my mind. When I reached home, I asked for the answer and he told me to make a guess. Argh! I blurted out 2 names and he showed me the piece of online news. One of my guesses was right. I could hardly believe it. It was such a shocker. You read about people committing crimes everyday in the papers and you don't really think much about them. But when it happens to be someone you know, it hits you hard. Till now, I couldn't quite fathom what drove him to that state. He was one of our very close friends, having spent much time cooking and eating together and gone on a few holidays too. 25 years?! His entire life....gone like that. I'm not going to say what crime he had committed here for anonymity sake.

This afternoon, we went to Guildford to visit some old friends, Nick and Anne and their little boy Panos. Nick happens to be the warden of the accomodation where our convicted friend used to live. We spent a lovely afternoon chatting while the kids played upstairs. Before we went home, we stopped at the nearby Tesco to buy some groceries. Even though I had visited that store so many times before, I couldn't remember the layout anymore. As I made my way through the store, I slowly recalled which aisle is for what, the Tesco where we had shopped with our friend on many evenings after dinner. We are still in shock.