Recession? What Recession?

Called in to the new retail centre at Gepps Cross yesterday (or "Gepps X" as they call it, making me remember gritting my teeth every time I passed the sign on the M25 back in the home-country that announced the "Dartford X-ing" - don't they realise a "cross" isn't an "x"?). Absolutely stunned with how many people were there - there was even a queue to get into the car park! Most of the queuing though was because it was raining, and of course, everyone wanted a space right outside their chosen shop; if you didn't mind walking for a few minutes and parking a bit further away there were loads of spaces! Once inside the stores it was no different - the queue to pay in Harvey Norman's was filling up half the store, and there was certainly no sign of any recession.

We needed a new telephone as our current one is driving us mad - the '4' key only works intermittently and when you have something like that, you realise that about 99% of the numbers you need to dial need just that number! Obviously any mobile number has a 4 in it, and of course the country code for the UK is 44, and our Daybreak Calling Card code has a 4 in the local access number and five 4s in the actual code! We also must both have larger than average fingers, and find a lot of these handsets have keys designed for a five-year-old's tiny pointy fingers, rather that our great big lumpy ones, so we wanted something with big buttons. We were actually lucky enough to find a really helpful staff member in Harvey Norman's who knew what she was talking about, told us that several hands-free sets have bad reception if you have broadband, and was able to advise us which did, and which did not have this problem, so we have ended up with something that hopefully will improve our phone experience no end!

Prices for printers and computers have really come down - they had a printer/scanner/fax machine for just $47! That's almost cheaper than the toner cartridges! And we got a laptop for DD - who's been nagging for ages that she needs one for her homework - for less than $650 (after some sort of cashback we still need to apply for) - need to look into the education tax refund now as well to see if we can claim even more of that cost back. Result one very happy daughter!