The joys of shopping in the physical realm.

Pretty much the entirety of Saturday morning and afternoon was spent on a quest for a penguin; not the swimming kind nor the chocolate-coated kind, but the hand-held steam-cleaning version.

They swarm in profusion over a variety of websites, Amazon included, but I needed to see one physically. It wasn't for me you understand it was for someone else, someone who's not allowed to lift too heavy a weight for a prolonged time and has small hands.

It should be a simple task to find a store that stocks them and whom I could then repay by buying it cheaper online... no actually I probably would buy it in store I believe in reward. Nothing, nada, zip; our local B&Q stock a whopping one model of cleaner a Vax, reviews of which were highly disapproving off. I worked my way around various electrical outlets and if I wanted a upright or cylinder steam cleaner I'd have been spoilt for choice. If I'd wanted handheld vacuum cleaners I could have picked from a plethora, but combine the two and the consistent answer was "Have you tried Argos?".

In the end I gave up and indeed tried Argos, I'd looked before in Kiddy, but hadn't seen any in their catalogue, but the Merry Hill branch actually had them as their own heading in the index. A choice of two whoohoo! An Argos exclusive, which reminds me to much of the Currys/PC World etc. own brand of cheap, cheerful, and cr*p (besides it looks like the bastard offspring of a watering can and a kettle); or an Electrolux for a tenner more which looked much better and had better specs including a much longer power cord.

So despite traipsing around for most of the day I ended up picking up a product I could have ordered from their website simply because not one single store had one available.

On another note Currys.digital had a Samsung LE32A556P 32" 1080p LCD digital tuner television for ~£460, £100 cheaper then elsewhere and I was seriously tempted. A little voice, however, is telling me that with this credit crunch, nay recession even, the number of television buyers will drop and so too will prices; especially just before the Christmas period.

Oh and Sunday I managed to point a hose at me car before taking it up to see the Bratii.