A Derby day with Deliciousness and the Doctor

What a lovely day Cloud and I had yesterday: the building work is approaching a stage 1 completion with most of our current activities approaching a finale. So we headed for Derby and started off a pretty brilliant day.

1) the magazine stall
Derby has an indoor market and a magazine stall that I swear can rival WHS: picked up the latest set of fridge magnets for Doctor Who in SFX and began the trundle round the city, enjoying the goth/emo/nu-rave kids on the block that always hang out by the square.

2) Haze
Venue of choice for said goth/emo/nu-rave under-17 year olds and women over 30 seeking hippy clothes and fulfillment of their own goth fantasies.

I picked up a very nice smock dress that I think will do lovely for a friend's wedding in the summer. Though knowing me I will wear it before the end of the week.

3) Oxfam
Always makes me happy to ply trade in an Oxfam. Bought three amusing cards and a CD of poetry. Felt reasonably well with the world considering.

4) Derby Westfield Shopping Centre
Yes, I know these beasts are evil and everywhere and that it has been KILLING the local small shop trade to have a spiffy new mall in the city centre to incorporate the old Eagle Market. But as we've always wandered the little streets anyway in each of our visits to Derby, and paid our money to lovely selective stores (Haze, Mustard shoes and more), I wanted to just SEE what the new place looked it. Okay, it IS a mall, but it is quite shiny. And...

5) razcherries
OH GOD. I thought I would never find these outside the London markets. Finding razcherries on a stall in the Westfield of Derby pretty much set me for the day.

6) European Restaurant and Bistro
On our last visit we were very taken with finding the staff coming out to eat their own lunch in the restaurant as they closed for the afternoon. It may have sinking floors and characterfully un-even ceilings but the food is divine. A very nice 2 courses (goats cheese tartlet and then salmon for me; mushrooms and then meatballs for him) plus wine for just over £30, followed again by the delight of seeing the staff come and sit down for their own grub. I do like the idea of the staff enjoying their own food.

7) Bennett's Department Store
A very old fashioned home and clothes store where we got a safe-cracking style analogue kitchen timer like this.

8) Westfield Shopping Centre (again)
Pro-Cook supplied us with a very nifty old-style bread bin for the new kitchen. Very nice.

9) Forbidden Planet
Ah so shoot me. Picked up the 2008 Doctor Who story book (since my copy got lost in Amazon/PO hell when we had the NZ trip earlier this year -- NB DO NOT TRUST the PO's offer to repost mail to an alternative address). Cloud insisted I enquire about the availability of Primeval figures: only the online and London store sell them. But I happily got the painted cover of a Buffy comic I had missed getting from Page 45. Yeah!

10) Doctor Who on the TV!
Ah, bliss. My sofa, razcherries and the Doctor. And blimey, is it just me or was that just fabulous? I mean I know I have a low threshold for happiness when it comes to the Doctor (I can get delight from just having it on the screen!) but I really enjoyed this. I thought Donna was great, taking the Doctor to task and being far more adult in a crisis than it was appropriate for either Rose or Martha to be; I thought the Doctor was great: bitter, reluctantly merciful, angry, mindful of his awesome awareness of time. The plot worked - the seers were creepy, their occupation by the pyro-wotsits suitably 'yuk' - and the supporting cast was top-notch. And I did enjoy watching Confidential afterwards: David at large in Pompeii and at Vesuvius, suitably awed by the experience.

So yeah, a good day.

Today we painted the pantry: ah well, at least we did it to music.