An Easy Saturday

This was quite a decent weekend for Russell and I. We had talked about visiting Oxford on Saturday, but we were both too lazy getting up and wasted too much of the day to warrant the trip. Instead, we decided to go out for lunch and do some shopping around Reading.

In spite of Russell's glowing post about a local pub we had been impressed with, we haven't found that particular pub open when we were hungry since the first day. It may have been open on Saturday, but we were too hungry to walk all the way there just to be disappointed, so we decided to pop into a restaurant closer by: "Pavlov's Dog."

On entering, we discovered it wasn't a restaurant (as it had appeared from the street) but a pub! After quite a bit of trial and error we have finally figured out how to procure food from a pub. At this point in the story, Matt is going to think I'm exaggerating since he showed us how to order food in a pub when we visited him in London. Even so, we've come across enough variation, that we just weren't comfortable with the procedure. This pub was especially easy because they had their menus right on the bar to indicate that we should order there, and the menu was already turned to burgers, which was what we were hoping to find. Thing were going quite well. There were enough people around that we were part of the crowd, but it was easy to find seating (not always the case) and no one gave us odd looks. This last may have been because we had finally figured out what to do in a pub to not look like total foreigners and we were eating at the appointed lunch time.

All good!

Very pleased with ourselves, we took our time and absorbed our surroundings, which informed us that there is a £3.50 special everyday after 3:00 for a burger and a beer (the one time we were too early), and Sunday night was Quiz Show night. We also noticed that there was a farmers market going across the street, so after lunch we headed over there. It turned out to be more of a flea market (with cheap knock-off brand stuff) but there were a few vegetable and flower stands as well.

We wandered around, ducked into a video game store, and eventually made our way to the "High and Mighty" store I had spotted some time back. The full name of this store is "High and Mighty: Big or Tall store." Notice the "or." Imagining a store full of clothing Russell could try on off the rack, I dragged him in. We were both a bit disappointed. There was no lack of clothing for Russell to try on, but... well, the clothing seemed to come in two primary styles: "Mafia Don" or "Orville Redenbacher". Too bad. Russell did find a t-shirt for £70 (neither of us could justify that) and a fancy linen shirt made in Italy for £100. The Italian shirt was quite fancy, and quite unlike anything else Russell has every worn. Russell was worried he would be too self conscious to wear it, though - which is bad news when you are paying the equivalent of $200. We left empty-handed. Oh well. Better luck next time.