Today we visited Crawley for the day. They’ve got really nice shopping areas! We walked along the historic High Street (which is a designated conservation area!) & browsed County Mall for quite a while. They’ve got a Quizno’s in there.. Mmm..

After that, it was off to Tilgate Park to see the animals!

The chickens had the run of the place! This one seemed to like walking on the railings, and then hopping down to visit the guinea pigs nextdoor! LOL

I want a pony!!!

Yeah, he knows he’s pretty!

The one on the bottom right looks pretty grumpy..

I love their fluffy feets!!!

Today we went to Southend-On-Sea.

It’s home to The World’s Longest Pleasure Pier! There’s even a train to take you from the shore to the end of it! While on the pier, we noticed a ship heading towards us.

Doing a Google search upon my return home, I discover that it was none other than Sedov, The World’s Largest Tallship!

She was being towed by tugboats and we were able to stay on the pier while she was being docked!

SO AWESOME!!!

We were really lucky that we took the train out at just the right time, not having known about any of this in advance!

No trip to the seaside is complete without a meal of fish & chips. I had ‘Rock’ with chips & mushy peas. Wikipedia tells me that ‘Rock’ is also known as ‘Rock Salmon‘ which is not really salmon at all but either dogfish, wolffish or catfish. Apparently, The Powers That Be decided to rename it to make it sound more appealing to consumers.

(I would have ordered “wolffish” anyway.. but I’m just odd like that.) It tasted fishier than, say, cod. Mine still had the (supposedly edible) centre bone in, too.

I might have eaten THIS — how cool is that?!

Here in the UK, once you’re done loading your groceries onto the conveyor belt in the checkout aisle, it seems to be your responsibility to put the little separator-thingy onto the belt, to indicate where your items end. It makes more sense to do things this way, since there’s nothing as annoying as the person in line behind you starting to unload their shopping cart before you’re done, leaving you with little or no room on the conveyor. It also seems a lot more courteous to do it yourself, so that the person behind you doesn’t need to stretch and contort themselves to reach over all of your items to grab their own separator.

In Canada, we usually do things the other way. Before you start to load your food on the belt, you need to put the separator bar down, to indicate where your items begin. I’ve never seen it done any other way, but I think I prefer the way it’s done on this side of the pond.

People over here aren’t as concerned with where their food is on the conveyor belt, though, and it almost makes me twitch. A Canuck MUST advance in line along with their items, keeping themselves right beside the beginning of their groceries. No, I can’t tell you why. If you want to annoy a Canuck, let their Kraft Dinner boxes get more than a few inches away from them.

The British are quite happy to plunk that little bar down and let their items get further and further away from them in the checkout lane. It boggles the mind, I mean who knows what can happen?! Maybe it’s because they don’t have Kraft Dinner here, and so can’t possibly understand the passion we have for those unnaturally orange coloured little noodles..

But could this be a Canada vs. UK phenomenon? Are there places in Canada where people put the bar down for the next person? What do you think is the best way to do things? Should I contact my consulate if I am prevented from standing within easy reach of my items?

During our post-picnic stroll through Simon’s Wood last Saturday, we happened upon this pretty little toadstool.

On Monday, we visited LegoLand Windsor!

Much fun was had, many photos were taken, and one very adorable stuffed dragon named Ollie was adopted and placed on top of my monitor, so that the Welsh Dragon living up there would have a little friend.

We also met this lovely fuzzy fellow who was out enjoying the weather, too!

On Tuesday, it was off to Reading to browse a couple of Polish food stores. I finally found garlic dill pickles in this country — we’ll have to see if they’re a suitable alternative to these! We also got some lovely rye bread, Gulasz and Klopsiki.