Next stop was Burleigh where I had instructions to pick up some plates for Gill. It was down by the canal and was a bit difficult to find, but it was a beautiful factory with cobbled streets and lovely old brick buildings. We were a day late for the tour, which would have been interesting, but the shop was excellent as well. We sat down and enjoyed a complimentary cup of tea with biscuits before getting down to business. Unfortunately, the pattern that Gill wanted only had a small selection of items and I couldn’t get the three sizes of plates she wanted, but I managed to get eight plates of the same size as a compromise, plus four small plates of a similar pattern.
Finally we drove to the Portmeirion factory shop. Rachel laughed at the fact that Paul with his map and I with the TomTom couldn’t navigate properly – we missed the first turn off, came back, then drove right past the shop and had to turn around and come back again! Portmeirion had a lot of good stuff and there was a small selection of Royal Worcester and Spode, but the pattern that we have at home wasn’t there and I couldn't see anything that Lou would have wanted. I decided that I would try again when I got to the Royal Worcester shop in Worcester.
We made it home it time for me to set up Voipbuster and call home before Lou and the boys left for the start of their day. It was lovely to hear Timmy’s wee voice saying ‘Hi Daddy’ over the phone, and hearing how Will had been looking after his Mummy. Timmy had been missing me terribly and hadn’t been sleeping well. I hope that he gets better and I can’t wait to see them all again. Rachel and Paul invited me over to their house to have Chinese for dinner, and while they popped home to get a menu, I went online and helped Mum to buy a Nintendo Wii off Amazon which I ordered to be sent to Pete and Lynn’s.
After the call, we went down to The Star and had a couple of pints (Banks’s Bitter, followed by Guiness – both lovely). I ordered the Szechuan Beef, and Jim picked it up on the way home. We took a detour and picked up our bottle of Singapore Sling which I thought would go quite well with the meal. Jim, Paul, Rachel and I eat our meals and sat chatting for a couple of hours which was a lot of fun. It turns out that Jim had been in the navy like Dad (only a couple of years later) so it was fun to hear some of his stories. Jim suggested we go to the Black Country Museum tomorrow which everyone agreed would be a good idea.
