For the teacher

The pal for the day was to head to Southampton. The Gorse Fox wanted to go to the Apple Store and it is always nice strolling round West Quay. Ocado seemed to be in on the plan because they delivered our shopping early and we were able to get on the road earlier than expected. We had a brilliant run through and were parked in the multi-story 50 minutes after leaving home.

We headed straight to Apple as the Gorse Fox expected that it would take some time to get sorted. We were greeted and assigned our own little troll and, within a few minutes, the Gorse Fox was the proud owner of new phone and was sitting down starting the data transfer between the iCloud and the new phone. The Silver Vixen wandered off for some shopping, knowing this was like to take a while. In the end we were pretty well set up within 30 minutes.

We went off for a coffee and a wander round. The Silver Vixen had wanted a new handbag and after examining all that was on offer in John Lewis found a Radley bag that fitted the bill to a tee. Then we hit M&S where we managed to find an outfit that suited her beautifully.

We had realised, while having our coffee that the battery on the Silver Vixen's phone was giving trouble. It had plunged by about 30% in the hour. We returned to Apple and arranged to have a new battery fitted... that, however, would take a while so we left the phone and headed off to the new West Quay South to find some lunch. Our restaurant du jour was Casa Brasil. This provides a choice of lunchtime foods but we opted for the buffet plus rodizio grill. This meant that as long as we showed a green placemat, the waiter would continue to bring us various BBQ'd meats... chicken, chorizo, sirloin steak, gammon, pork, turkey.... and so forth. It was very good, and though the meat just kept coming, the portions were a sensible (i.e. small) size so you managed to get a lot of flavours long before you were full.

We returned to Apple. Though we had returned at the time suggested, the phone wasn't ready. It turns out that the engineer had broken the screen connector when he opened the phone, so not only did we get a new batter, we got a new screen. The Gorse Fox pointed out that the screen had had a glass screen protector on it, so they also fitted a replacement (free of charge). The Silver Vixen has a nicely refurbished phone as a result.

Despite leaving around five o'clock we had a pretty painless run through Southampton and along the M27/A27 to home. That was an unexpected bonus.