County Mall, Crawley, Christmas Shopping

So over the weekend we paid a visit to County Mall in Crawley to do our Christmas shopping, and it was fairly successful too, it *could* have been a disaster, as it was the grand "Switching on of the lights" ceremony, causing us to exchange slightly concerned looks upon spotting the sign announcing the event, as the whole idea was to *avoid* crowds of rabid shoppers...

...anyway, as it turned out it was a fairly low key affair, all kicking off with a half audible rendition of some Spice Girls numbers by some young singers, unhindered by any pretence of talent and overflowing with enthusiasm, it's just a shame the PA wasn't working very well...they were followed by some rather better Christmas carol singers (who had sensibly waited until all the problems with the sound system had been ironed out) -

- and then Santa's Grotto opened and the crowd swarmed away from the music...

Anyway, we took advantage of everyone standing around looking and listening to zoom around the largely empty stores (and I know I deserve to be dodging bullets for saying this, as many people won't be in a similar position so early in the run-up) but it's such a pleasure to shop at this time of year, when all the shelves are full (so plenty of choice) and all the goods haven't been picked up and squashed and shaken and poked (over and over again) until the boxes are tatty...

...it wasn't all plain sailing though, the "3 for 2" in Boots proved a little difficult to actually turn into a bargain (and in the end involved a bit of over-spending and 2 visits to the checkout to maximise value), a faff, but no *real* problem when the stores are devoid of shoppers...we wandered the rest of Crawley, and actually managed to get pretty much every gift we need (only 2 or 3 remaining now)...one could almost relax! ;)