Last Saturday, I went to Eden with my Mum, who I feel for the sake of this blog should be called Mother Eris. I may be in trouble if she ever reads this....

So, last weekend, Mother Eris & I went shopping. We often try to have time that we spend together in a girly fashion, but, alas, due to Mother Eris' very demanding job, and my penchant for getting distracted by shiny things ('Right, I am going to M&S to buy something for dinner....Oooh, look! Cinema! I suddenly have an overwhelming desire to watch Horton Hears A Who'), we rarely actually get the time to do this.

However, last Saturday we managed. So we got up bright and early, took our cat to the vet (something we are doing a lot of at the moment), dropped him off and home, and headed to Eden. We parked the car, and headed into the centre. This marked the start of an absolutely fabulous day. We started off by going to House of Fraser for breakfast (trying our luck, as every time we have tried to go there before it has been packed, we couldn't get a seat!), and deciding what our plan of action should be for the day.

Being rather stereotypical women, our main priorities were underwear & shoes. So off we frolicked to the underwear department of HoF. Hopefully any women who read this blog will know what I am talking about when I say it is beautiful. Many different ranges of underwear, all laid out in a charming fashion, there is so much choice for all sizes. The shop assistants are second to none, they really are. All smiling and ready to chat and laugh with the customers, and helping us find exactly what we wanted. A moment of light relief from the arduous task of deciding what colour bra to buy was provided by the stereotypical 'man lost in an underwear section'. He was wandering round, looking a bit dazed, and yet steadfastly refusing to ask for help. So one of the assistants went over to him, and, with a look of intense relief on his face, he explained what he was after. You see this type of man in shops like Lush as well, issued with the command 'for my birthday I would like some Buffy & Flying Fox from Lush.' He enters this alien territory with a look akin to that of a deer about to be hit with a truck. Luckily the assistants in HoF are obviously trained in gentle handling when it comes to such men!

After we had spent our month's wages (or so it seemed!) in the underwear department, Mother Eris & I sauntered out into the main body of the shop, and headed downstairs. Taking a brief glance at the shoes (they are so very pretty, but M&S prices were needed after the splurge upstairs), we made towards the exit of the shop.

Suddenly, with catlike reflexes, a blonde girl leapt out at us, thrusting into my hand a card offering a free Benefit makeover. Well. We scuttled back to the Benefit counter, where they sat us both down, and proceeded. They were friendly and chatty, and both were obviously Wycombe born & bred (one of them used to be in the Summer Youth Project, so we were able to chat about acting in the Swan & Town Hall, as I used to be in the Wycombe Youth Theatre). Both Mother Eris & I felt like a million dollars when they had finished, and bought some of the makeup (Father Eris pointed out that the free makeover was just to prompt us to buy stuff, to which I politely responded that I didn't care, because it is splendid and cheaper than Clarins).

We frolicked out of HoF, into Eden itself. It was heaving. Everywhere you looked there were people smiling and laughing, children playing with the fountain, sticking their hands into the running water and flicking it at each other, with passers-by smiling benignly at them. Mother Eris had some errands to carry out at the bank, so we sauntered through Eden, emerging by Lloyds TSB, and we wandered down the High Street. Which was also busy, which was gratifying; both Eden and the High Street were filled with happy people, fantastic. The market was on, so we walked back down the other side of the High Street, drinking in the atmosphere of everyone in our little town, filling the streets with happiness and laughter.

Then it was back to M&S, Mother Eris wanted some new clothes for a holiday, and I just like to buy stuff. We like M&S, and can spend a large amount of time in there; I think our record is 4 hours. We headed to the shoe department, which was filled with women trying on shoes and offering opinions on the shoes being tried by total strangers. When Mother Eris and I began to (jokingly!) squabble, an older lady standing next to me laughed, and said 'I don't want to have to referee you two, be nice!' There was a sense of camaraderie, everyone was there enjoying themselves, and having a lovely day out in our town.

Once we had finished in M&S we wandered into some of the little shops as well, I needed some birthday cards, so we sauntered back to the Card Department opposite the Chilterns, and peeked into the closing down sale of Dorothy Perkins. I was also after a little hairbrush I can pop into my handbag, and I knew that Wilkinson’s sold them, so we wandered into there as well, and then sauntered back over Frogmoor to the car park.

We were in Wycombe, both inside and outside Eden, for about 5 hours, and both had a fantastic time. It was just wonderful to be able to just pop down to our local town, and have that relaxing a day. While before Eden opened we would probably have still gone to Wycombe, the choice we had for the things we needed was so much larger now, and I can honestly say that I did not notice any change in the number of people in the High Street, and nor did I see one person who looked like they were having anything but a lovely Saturday in Wycombe.