Did I say sane??

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about not being able to find a tankini without bra support. Well today I went to Meadowhall, to meet a friend and continue the hunt for the elusive support-less cossie. The plan, roughly speaking, was for us to meet there then go on to Decathlon, she'd looked when I ranted before and said there were several, and then we were going to go back to Meadowhall for coffee at Costa and a chat, both of us feeling the need for some RL conversation without children present (slung older babies notwithstanding :) ) J was going to text me with her phone number and I was going to ring when I set off, since she's in the neighbourhood, relatively speaking. So I kept checking my phone, no message. Looked on YahooIM and she's not online, so I pinged a mutual friend to ask if she had her number, which said friend duly gave. So I texted to say I was on my way...

When I arrived, 10 mins after I'd said, which I don't think is too bad for someone used to running on home-ed time, J wasn't there, so I looked round, no sign, I headed off to M&S to look at cossies and tried to ring. 'This number is temporarily unavailable...' hmmmm... Back to Costa, still no sign. I had a good look at the number, there's an extra digit :|

So I rang dh to ask him to check if I've saved the number to my phone properly, and yes... so then can he sign in to Trillian and see if anyone's online who would have had it, he pings a couple of people but no reply. So then can he find out where the Decathlon store is in Sheffield, which he does, and explains to me, and I know roughly where it is so I set off...

And here's where it gets fun...

I was going from Meadowhall (the black circle here) to Bramhall Lane (just about where the red circle is)



On leaving Meadowhall I saw signs for the ring road, so, naturally enough since I knew that I wanted to be on the ring road, I followed them. The thing is, Sheffield has an inner ring road and an outer ring road. You can see on the map of the outer ring road that it's not actually a ring, more like a quarter of an oval. So perhaps there's some explanation somewhere for me ending up in Derbyshire, turning round at the junction where I've drawn a circle on this pic:



Quite a long way away... There's obviously something wrong with stating 'Outer Ring Road' on a road sign when 'ring road' will suffice to confuse the incomers. It seems like Sheffield don't want the supporters of teams visiting Sheffield United to find Bramhall Lane either, going by the lack of signage when I found my way back towards Sheffield itself. Driving through Woodseats reminded me of Bishopston, where Born are based, so if there's anyone in that area, it might well be a good place for a natural/ethical baby products shop *grin*

I got to the *inner* ring road and spotted a sign saying Bramhall Lane, finally. So I made it to Decathlon, which is big, but there weren't any tankinis at all, only triangle and balconette tops and different styles of bottoms. It obviously shows though that people want tankinis without support, since they'd obviously sold out! I had a wander round while I was there, and bought a float belt to help dd3 when learning swimming strokes (she can swim, in as much as she can propel herself through the water, but I thought it would be good if she didn't have to worry about sinking when figuring out how the arms and legs go together for breaststroke...) I had a look at the bike seats while I was there too, but I still want a Wee Ride and while there was mention of front-mounted seats on the bike seat blurb, there wasn't a slot for one.

So from Decathlon back to Meadowhall then, back to M&S to buy the tankini I'd seen there and loved, even though it not only has a support shelf it has sculpted cups, eurgh! I got there and updated dh, who told me that he now had J's phone number, so I rang, and we met up. Turned out J had my number from before I swapped the shop number to my new phone, so when she texted me it was lost in the ether, along with mine to her. She'd been to M'hall and hung around, mooched about feeling bored and eventually left. We'd even hung around in the same bookshop and missed each other, doh! Anyway it was about 4pm, so she made arrangements and came and met me, we had coffee and cake and chatted, it was lovely :) Her son is a little charmer too.

Will blog about the cossie itself in a few when I've taken pics of it...