Went out for the day on Wednesday, took the girls as there's no school Wednesdays, which was probably our first mistake. They say they like to go, but really it's not a day out for them as we went to the 'mall' at Nantes. I think I've mentioned it before, not really a 'mall' as we would call it, just a collection of a few expensive shops with a large roof over them. But they have a carousel and Macdonalds and we agreed that they could go to macdonalds. But not the carousel at €2,50 a ride!

When we got there we went to the cafe for our treat and as I was standing in the queue there were two people serving, a woman and a young guy who looked a bit drippy to say the least. I was thinking please, please don't let him serve me, but I just knew, as soon as I saw him, that he would be the one to serve me and it wouldn't go well at all. I ordered three drinks and four cakes which on the whole went ok, except he tried to give me a couple of those milk carton thingys you get in hotels with about a teaspoon of milk in instead of a glass of cold milk for Georgia, even though there was a proper sized carton in the fridge behind him, he said that was for making hot milk and he couldn't possibly serve me a glass of cold milk from it. But he was arguing with me and I won and got my daughter's glass of cold milk.

I took the tray to my waiting family and served up their drinks and cakes, but Adrian had no sugar with his coffee so I had to go back and queue again to ask for sugar as it was behind the counter and not self-service. Sat back down again and had a look at the bill. He had charged me for 5 cakes instead of 4. Get back up and re-join queue. I explain to him the problem (quite simple I thought). Then I explained it to him again. Then he went off to talk to someone else. Eventually they came back 'no it's ok' he says, 'the bill is right, all the cakes are the same price, I just rang one of them up under a different name'. At this point I am begginning to steam enough that you could have used me to heat up the milk that you're not allowed to have cold and I find myself talking to him like the idiot that he clearly is, 'No. I. ordered. four. cakes. you. have. charged. me. for. five. cakes.' Still he doesn't get it. The woman with him dispatches him to deal with the ever increasing queue behind me and then asks me to explain the problem again. 'I. ordered. four. cakes. that. fucking. imbecile. charged. me. for. five. cakes.' For some reason she is a little tetchy and informs me that 'things like this do happen sometimes you know'. Yup, and always when I'm around. Get my refund, go back to my long lost family, drink my chocolate milkshake, which had started life as a hot chocolate, leave tray on table instead of clearing it away as is expected and leave.

It all just makes me think 'why is it always me?' It's like getting in the wrong queue at the supermarket. There's two side by side to choose from, both about the same length, the person on the left doesn't have much but is a doddery old biddery and will clearly take ages sorting her stuff out and when it comes to paying will always pay by cash, insist on using up her change, but can't see it because she's half blind, will tip it out onto tray in front of cashier for cashier to sort out and then start up a conversation with the cashier about how sorry she is to have been a such a nuisance and how difficult it is to be old and how she really should have been shot at 60 along with everyone else that age and done us all a favour. And on the right is a young woman, looks sensible, looks organised, looks like she'll pay by card, but has a huge trolley of stuff that will take some packing.

But ultimately, it doesn't matter which one you choose on this basis, because the person in front of the person in front of you will either be paying by cheque and will take five minutes looking for her cheque book at the bottom of her handbag and then have to go back in there to find her ID card; or she will have forgotten to weigh one item of her fruit and veg purchases and we'll all stand around waiting and pretending we don't mind as she apologises for having to go back into the store, to the fruit and veg section, which is always at the back of the shop, to weigh whatever it is so that the cashier knows the price (why they can't just weigh them at the till like in Lidls and the uk I don't know.They'd probably have to have another qualification for that, no doubt involving a good two years of studying.); or she'll have bought something on offer, but the price hasn't rung up correctly on the till, so we'll all stand around waiting and actually not giving a shit anymore what anyone else thinks, so we're tutting and huffing away whilst the cashier makes a phone call to get someone to check it.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the 'mall'. Dragged the kids into Ikea as we had to get flat-pack stuff for the gites. Naturally, they've changed their ranges since we were last there and we couldn't get everything we wanted and of course we ended up spending loads of time wandering around trying to find alternatives. Georgia managed to loose her new headband that I'd bough only half an hour beforehand. Couldn't find it anywhere, she said that 'the lady took it away'. Who knows. The girls were going nuts with boredom and we were going nuts with them. They have a creche which we used to leave Isabella in, but we couldn't this time as they only take kids from the age of four and Georgia would have wanted to go with her, but isn't old enough, so we thought we keep them with us..... Got down to the section where you pick up your flat pack and eventually found what we needed. Unfortunately, we then found that we couldn't buy everything as it was far too heavy and we only had the roof bars on the car to put it on. So we're going to have to go back again to get the rest of the stuff. You can guess we're looking forward to that.