An afternoon in France

A post that isn’t an x amount of weeks in daily photography! 
Shock! Horror! OMG! 
Ok I’m done, honest :). 
This is about *gasp* (NOW I’m done! But surely I can mock my own inability to post in a timely manner about things I get up to!) 2 days ago, because on Wednesday, Bert took half a day off to get up to shenanigans in France! 

And obviously, by shenanigans I mean shopping at V2 and concert at Bobble Café. 

Because I had some medical appointments first, and then popped into Nou to say hi to Nevenka and then her dog was in the shop and OF COURSE I had to pet Jules because Jules is ADORABLE (he’s a chocolate coloured labrador and I regret not taking photos). But basically, I wasn’t home before 1PM and then it took me another hour to change and do my make-up and have lunch. So I feel I did quite well getting vaguely presentable in just an hour :). Driving to V2 actually took longer than we thought, because it was like 4.15 when we got there. Seeing V2 is open ‘till 9PM and we didn’t have to be at Bobble Café ‘till 8PM at the latest, that was totally fine.

 

First off we went to Micromania, where I bought two blind boxes in the hope of getting Launchpad McQuack. Which sadly I didn’t, but at least Claire and Marie will be happy with the mini figs I did get. So I don’t consider it money wasted. 
I also got another Darth Vader latte mug, because that mug is my fave and I wanted a second. For a while they used to be sold EVERYWHERE, but that time is over so when I saw just one more in the store, I was all “yeah, I’m getting it”. Which I did. 
I also resisted buying a 20th anniversary old school Tamagotchi, which I feel was a small miracle. I was so excited about them when the release was announced, but when faced with them, I just felt like I couldn’t spend €20 on one, so I didn’t. 
Even though Micromania generally has stuff I like, I don’t actually like the store. Because it’s ALWAYS a fucking shambles. 
I will spare you all the rant, but the clerk ringing me up was grounding on my nerves for not properly doing his job. To the point where Bert actually came in from outside to give him the stink eye. Twice. 
I HATE MICROMANIA! But as it’s the one place where I can find certain things, I’m stuck with dealing with it when I’m near one. Grrrrrr… 

Sephora was also a right mess of chaos. Bert and I took one look at the chaos inside and then fanned out to grab the stuff on my list. Which was thankfully still in the spaces it was in a few months ago, huzzah. 
And by some miracle, there was no one else at the register! I don’t think I’ve ever been in and out a Sephora in under 10 minutes ever before. 
Bert was very impressed. 
I will admit that even though I was on the fence about buying the Too Faced Gingerbread palette, having seen it in real life I’ve gone completely off it. 
Online it looked like it had all the kind of shades I love, and yet different enough to what I already own to make it worth my while. But when I saw it in person, I went right off it. So I’m glad I didn’t buy it online! 

Auchan supermarket was SUPER crowded, so we just grabbed what was on our shopping list and left it at that. Still took us ages because Auchan is huge, and then people at the register were having all sorts of issues with their meal checks (in many case part of your pay is paid in meal checks, which you can use in several stores. The government claims it’s a bonus, but in reality it’s not, it’s just part of your pay) or bank cards. I was paying by cash, and the cashier was SO HAPPY about that. 
And I, in turn, was happy she didn’t give me grief about my Micromania stuff still setting off the alarm, even though I asked the clerk to cancel the alarm. TWICE! TWICE and he still didn’t sort it out (he didn’t even want to bother sorting it out when I beeped going out, went back in and asked him to sort it). She wasn’t even surprised when it turned out to be a Micromania purchase either, so that tells you everything you need to know. 
Seriously: my advice would be to either go to Micromania last, or go there and take stuff to your car and then continue shopping. 

At that point, our shopping bag was FULL so we took our shopping to the car before going back in to have dinner at flunch. I wanted to get the children’s menu to get a Mickey90 figure for my friend Craig, but no luck as they refused to sell them to adults… Clearly they rather have people throwing away food than ordering a meal they can actually finish… (luckily Bert was there to finish my burger). 

 

France doesn’t celebrate Sinterklaas, at least I don’t think they do (although the internet claims that the French Flanders area does, but I saw no evidence to the matter at V2 so I’m just going to assume they don’t), so V2 was in full Christmas mode already. You could even have your photo taken with Santa. Which I wanted to suggest Bert and I do, but he started complaining about how it wasn’t Sinterklaas yet and I got distracted telling him about how that celebration is regional and so that didn’t happen. 



 

We did take photos at the pretty tree though! 

I still feel we should replace Sinterklaas with Krampus, but I seem to be on my own on that one.

 

Because I am weak and just can NOT resist a good highlighter, especially not faced with that much beautiful soft gold, I went into M.A.C and bought the set. And struggled to just buy it without leaving my details. 

Sadly I didn’t manage to avoid the glossy paper bags from Sephora and M.A.C, which sucks because they are NOT eco-friendly what so ever. At least I managed to avoid a plastic bag at Micromania (which was a struggle in itself). I really feel M.A.C especially needs to do better. I was quite happy to receive the holiday bag, because it’s padded and I can use it for storage. BUT let’s be honest, most of these bags will end up on a landfill. So I feel that M.A.C, as well as Sephora, should #dobetter when it comes to packaging. Also because there was a LOT of packaging involved in my set. But yeah, after that we went to Lomme, where the Bobble Café is for the concerts. It was good to see friends and see gigs :).

 

Kinderfield was supporting, which I did not know beforehand, so that was a nice surprise. I didn’t like how LOUD the music was though. No fault of the bands of course, but the management seems to run on the idea that causing hearing damage by too many decibels is acceptable (newsflash: it’s not).





 

Halfway through G.L.A.M.S’ set it did get turned down to more acceptable levels so that was good :). We had to leave early though, because it was already after 10PM, and a two hour+ drive and Bert had to be up at 5.30AM for work. But even without the encore the gigs were really good! 

So yeah, shenanigans in France :). 
Although I’m not sure in how far this qualifies as shenanigans. 

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