A lesson reinforced

Yesterday was an expensive experience.  It was on Tuesday that the Old Bat asked me to look at the breadmaker.  We have owned a breadmaker for several years and in all that time have only ever bought bread in France.  We have made ordinary white bread, malt loaves, cheese and bacon flavoured loaves and both brown and white rolls.  But something had gone wrong and She Who Must Be Obeyed was hopeful that I might be able to get the spindle which turns the paddle during the kneading process back where it should be.  Alas, that was beyond my meagre engineering skills and I declared the machine dead.  So yesterday I asked the good lady when she intended making more rolls, and guess what?  It was yesterday.  So I checked the catalogue we have from the local catalogue store and found they sell five different breadmakers, two of them being the brand that SWMBO favours.  The pictures showed that the machines were different and there was £20 difference in the price but nothing in the text explained quite what the difference was.  Nor did I manage to find out from a quick search of the webbynet.  We decided to settle on the cheaper machine and I duly raced up to the store to collect the last one they had in stock.

Having unwrapped the new apparatus, I glanced at the instruction book, which covered both models.  Straight away I saw the main difference: the more expensive model had a feature that was on our old machine and that we did use, a feature called a raisin dispenser.  This automatically puts the raisins into the dough at the right stage when making malt bread or drops in the pieces of bacon when making cheese and bacon bread.  But at least the cheaper model "beeps" to announce that it's time to do the job manually - if one happens still to be around at that time.

(Madam, I hardly need say, decided to postpone bread-making until today - a point which assumed relevance later in the day.)

My afternoon was even more expensive.  I have been aware for some time that the tread on my car's tyres is getting closer and closer to the legal minimum and with the annual MOT due this month as well as the worst months of the winter ahead or us, I decided it was time to bit the bullet and replace them rather than drag matters out for another thousand or two miles.  So, four new tyres, please, and while you're about it, better check the tracking and make the necessary adjustments.  I've driven over a few potholes recently so there's bound to be something wrong there. I did shop around a bit before committing myself and, as a result, managed to get the price down a little but it still set me back £450.

While the tyres were being replaced I wandered up the road and into an electrical store, just to pass the time.  I was tempted by several cameras - 17 megapixel, 30x optical zoom - but kept my wallet in my pocket.  I wandered further and found myself in the small electrical goods area.  There on a shelf were the breadmakers - and I could have bought the more expensive model for less than I had paid for the cheaper one!

So it was not just one lesson reinforced but two:

1. Shop around properly before buying.
2. Once you've bought something, don't look at prices in other stores.

~~~~~

We should have been at Brighton Lions Club's monthly dinner meeting tonight but the guy who arranges where and what we eat has been ill and so the meeting has been postponed until next week.  As the OB had arranged her menus on the basis that we would not be eating at home today, I have offered to take her to our local Italian.  I don't have a picture of that establishment, but can offer this picture of a tiny restaurant in Oppede les Vieux in Provence.  We ate there - outside - in a strong wind.  The meal (daube) was superb although not what we expected.