Yesterday, I made one of my rare trips into Bath city centre. One of the reasons I try to avoid town is because it is big, busy and full of annoying people. The first part of our visit involved going to the post office. Outside a group of Special Brew-drinking tramps had a fight over a cigarette. I hadn’t been in Bath ten minutes, but I was scared already.

A photo-booth was inside the post office. My passport has expired and I am going away on holiday with Claire for our honeymoon next summer. Given the recent delays travellers have experienced in obtaining passports, I thought it would be a good idea to get things going now, even though it is a year away! Therefore, to get a photo for the new passport and to hide from the brawling hobos, I jumped into the booth and closed the curtain. Minutes later, passport photos in hand and five pound coins lighter, I left the post office, making sure to avoid the angry tramps.

The next stop was H Samuel. I instantly fell in love with a china meerkat dressed as James Bond and dropped an endless of supply of hints to Claire, regarding Christmas presents for me. The purpose of the trip to the jewellers wasn’t to look at model animals. More importantly, Claire and I were after wedding rings. We saw a delightful collection of white gold rings, which can be engraved. No rings were purchased yesterday. Not just because they were considerably more expensive than the price of a passport photo, but because our wedding isn’t until next year and fingers change in size and fall off.

This would look very nice  next to the television. Hint, hint, hint!

It was then all off to Holland and Barrett. A health freak shop that sells tree hugging hippy tea. I am not a health freak, nor am I a tree hugging hippy. I do, however, like herbal teas. One reason for this is I have found in the past, when I drank coffee all day long, I went a bit mad. I don’t really like bouncing off the wall, so limit myself to just one or two cups of coffee a day. The second reason is I don’t like normal tea, whether it be Tetleys, Typhoo or the stuff the monkeys drink. The third and final reason – I like these strange herbal teas. I noticed there was a special offer on the tea. Therefore I went a bit crazy and bought six boxes of hippy tea.

My tree hugger tea collection

I then made my way to Vodafone to collect a mobile phone and take out a new contract. I knew exactly what I wanted and was prepared to say “No! No! No” to any pushy sales assistants, trying to sell me extras I don’t need. In fairness to Vodafone, they didn’t. I told them what I wanted, they performed a credit check, a signed a contract, and walked away with a brand-spanking new Samsung Galaxy S5, which I am still learning how to use – I’ve been an iPhone user for over half a decade. Steve Jobs will be turning in his grave.

We did pop into a few other shops afterwards, including Iceland and Marks & Spencer, but these are not as blogworthy as the other visits, and given how boring I no doubt managed to make them sound, I won’t inflict more pain upon your eyes and brain. Blog over… for today.