Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

We seem to have become Costco members over the weekend, having somehow missed the opening of a branch in Croydon last year. Well, to be precise, marypcb is a member, I just have the delightfully named "spouse card".

I spotted it online the other day, and discovered that either of us could be corporate members. We scared up the documentation for marypcb's company, and tootled over to the monstrous establishment somewhere on an industrial estate. It's a cthuloid site, a huge temple to mammon and consumption with everything inside supersized or larger. Huge shelves and wide freezers fill the site, while you wheel around a trolley the size of a small family car.

We came out fully signed up, and, at the same time, have stocked up on many of the things we needed for the house. Apart from, of course, some of the things we went in for in the first place. It's probably some form of PTSD, as you get overwhelmed by the sheer size of everything there (though as marypcb pointed out, it's just US style/size packaging in the UK!).

Now that we have our photograph-embellished membership cards, it's like being part of a cult.

A large cult, with very few rules (apart from "spend all your money here"), but a cult all the same.

Though not so much of one as the Ikea Family. Now that's a cult.

Why yes, we're members of that too.

Come, join the Family...

We drove down to the Sussex coast yesterday.

I'd realised we'd managed an entire English summer without looking at the sea, and it was something that I was missing. The salt tang of the air, the gentle breezes, the soft lap of the waves. Yesterday might not have been the best of days to go down to the sea, the grey skies hanging over south London weren't so much a portent of bad weather as, well, the rain itself.

Still, we headed south.

As we rolled over the Downs the skies began to clear, and the sun was soon peeking out from behind the clouds. We arrived at Birling Gap shortly before sunset, and stood on the top of the steps watching the gulls swoop and swirl. The sea was gentle, and the setting sun reflected in the rock pools and on the wet sand.

It was, as they say, a lovely evening.



Birling Gap, Sussex
September 2009