Trolley adventures

We are still are still carless, so this morning the boys and I got a taxi to the German kindergarten. After spending 20 dollars on a taxi there, it seemed excessively profligate to get one home again, so I waited. Instead of just sitting around for 3 hours, I walked about, and looked in shops. I went into a thrift shop and bought a book (The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth, which I got about half way through several years ago, and then left on a plane).

Then I went further and found a hardware shop, which sold a trolley - the kind one can put children and stuff into and drag behind you. When we were in England, S had expressly forbidden me from buying such a thing, but that was in England, and maybe the rules are different here. (Besides, it's a long way from the car to the apartment, and it's me who has to make 5 trips carrying shopping bags). I was going to try to sneak it in past S, but I had forgotten my keys, so I had to knock and then look slightly sheepish with my trolley.

So this afternoon, the boys and I went to the beach. They sat in the trolley, and we made much faster progress than usual. I bought a basketball - I've wanted a basketball for ages, because there are basketball courts next to the playground and that would give me something more wholesome to do than sit and hope that other parents turn up and give me someone to talk to (and that they are not mad - as they often seem to be).

While I was in the shop, I saw a remote control hovercraft. I've always wanted a remote control hovercraft (in a bit of my mind that's not accessible to consciousness) and it was only $20 (plus tax, of course), so I bought it. Then I immediately regretted it. "Yes, sir, I know that this item you have bought is a completely useless piece of tat, but we are a beach side shop, and therefore not only permitted, but obliged to sell useless pieces of tat to impulsive consumers such as yourself." I also imagined that it was going to need about 100 batteries, and my supply of rechargeable batteries and battery charger haven't arrived yet.

[Aside: CoCE has the finest stationery cupboard I have ever seen. By a long way. It's got batteries. Batteries! In AA and AAA sizes! I don't know why, but it's tempting to never buy another battery again. Except (a) that's not very environmentally wholesome, and as I've got a supply of rechargeable batteries and a posh battery charger, batteries are effectively free anyway, and (b) there's probably a hidden camera somewhere, and then they'll sack me. (They'll probably wait a year before they sack me, because if you sack someone on an H1B visa, within a year of them starting their job, you have to pay their expenses to get home again). It always makes me think of that Dilbert book called "Build a better life through stealing office stationery supplies."]

Where was I? Oh yes, I opened the hovercraft and it had a battery for the remote control and a rechargeable battery pack (8 AA batteries - NiCad, rather than NiMH, but you can't have everything) and a battery charger. So I put the batteries in and turned it on and the fans spun sort of uselessly, and then stopped. So maybe the batteries were flat, or maybe it is a useless piece of tat.

Meanwhile, D was playing bulldozers with the remote control, so it made a sort of grating noise when you wiggled the levers (until I spent quite a while shaking it) and the skirt bit underneath seemed to need tucking in. But all will be revealed when the batteries are charged and we try it out tomorrow.