The joy of shopping with your spouse

It started when Karl got a heat transfer system. I like the idea so much that I wanted one too. This is because the living room is so hot with the fire on that you just about faint when you stand up and get your head in the hot air zone under the roof. But when you open the door to let some of this extra heat head down the hallway to the rest of the house peculiar drafts start niggling at your feet.

So feeling slightly more alive on Sunday I went with husband to Bunnings. Bunnings is always an interesting place to go and you tend to get sidetracked before you get anywhere near what you were looking for. This time it was the outdoor pizza oven and smoker that distracted me first. Very trendy and not that expensive for what it was. Not that we ever cook pizza outdoors or smoke anything but it looked cool (didn't buy it though). Then husband remembered a piece of wood he needed to make his life complete so we looked at that. Eventually we found the aisle with the heat transfer systems. So husband opened the box, sat down on the floor and read all the enclosed info while examining the contents of the box. Then he got a thermostat and had a close look at that. This took some time and I disassociated myself from the man on the floor unpacking the merchandise by scanning the goods on the shelves opposite. I was quite tempted by the remote security camera setup, that wasn't that expensive either, though the colour one would be better... and the mirror demister was hardly any money "can we have one of those?" I asked husband. He looked it over "yes but we need a new fuse on the fusebox and another wire down the length of the house before there is enough power down that end to run it. Though if we do that we could get another heated towel rail as well. Isn't the powerbill high enough though?" Okay, sounds complicated, and more expensive than I thought, it was just an idea, so I won't get one of those right now...

Some time later he is completely conversant with the workings and wiring of the heat transfer system. He packs it all back up and puts it back on the shelf.
"What's wrong with it?" I ask.
"Nothing. I think we should have a look at Mitre 10."
"Oh okay"

For some reason we go to a pet shop on the way to Mitre 10. The cats need new collars but we don't get any. We look at the overpriced puppies and express shock to the hard selling assistant that an unpapered puppy could be so expensive. Assistant wisely makes herself scarce before we launch into the sins of impulse buying animals. From there it is just across the road to the electrical appliance shop to check out DVD recorders. We don't buy any of those either, but we comparison shop round the corner in two more electrical shops.

After that there is a handy cafe so we get something to eat. It was a somewhat expensive cafe and lunch was almost the price of a DVD player (but not as expensive as a DVD recorder or a puppy). We ponder this over the meal - which was very good.

Have now lost all interest in heat transfer systems but go to Mitre 10 who doesn't have the cheap one anyway. Instead we buy a piece of timber.

So five hours away from home, and we have a nice piece of wood.