Monday 25th August 2008

This weekend has been a long weekend in England with today being the last of three bank holidays for the year....unlike SA we don't have a public holiday every second month here, so you must know how special a weekend like this one is.

Unfortunately the weather hasn't really played along (the locals are constantly moaning about this summer and the fact that it just hasn't happened....me I haven't found it bad at all, but I guess it is in the eye of the beholder), apart from Saturday which was lovely we have had a bit of a wet weekend and have been forced to spend a fair part of it inside, which as you know resulted in a visit to the movies yesterday afternoon.

As for today, today we shopped.....I have been talking to Simon about using our conservatory as a tv / children's lounge for a little while now (mom's genius idea), and with the arrival of the PSII he has finally agreed that our little lounge is just too small for all of us at once and the noise can become positively deafening at times, as any of you with children and PSII will understand.

It was generally agreed that all we needed to make the transition was a second tv and possibly a dvd player so today we went shopping for these two items and much to my utter amazement we came home with a 37 inch television and a new dvd player, I have truly never seen anything so big in my life, and what amazes me the most is that we could afford it out of one months salary, something we definitely wouldn't have been able to do in SA.

When I mentioned this fact to mom she very astutely commented that it is not that the items are that much cheaper here (this is in fact an expensive country to live in) it is the fact that we have more disposable income as we do not have to pay for things like school fees, medical aid, security, expensive insurance and staff salaries, and she is right. I guess if we had had that extra R7000 or so per month in SA it would have gone a long way towards the luxuries that we are able to afford in this country.