We had a family tea on Sunday, and it was lovely for us to be together. A pleasant evening, and then back to our usual B&B. We saw them the next morning, then DB1 had to depart. DB2 and I tool mum and dad for a lovely homestyle lunch, and then we collected a new combi oven for them, which mum had just bought. Her previous, and rather ancient, one had given up the ghost a few days beforehand.
The afternoon was more chatting, and for 'tea' we had some Christmas Cake which I'd taken with me. I had thought about trying to pass it off as a birthday cake, but that would have been disingenuous/
We had booked a second night at the B&B, and so it was another relaxed evening. We popped along the following morning, and finally left at about 1.30 to start our journey home.
We were coming home the long way, so that we could go via Swansea. My brother came fabric shopping with me, even buying some with the intention of doing a few home makes himself. We took a while, and it was rush hour when we left. We might as well have stayed in the shop for longer. Or gone somewhere to eat.
We stopped at some services. Quick wee. It was almost deserted. Pick up a sandwich and some crisps in M&S, and get a Costa Coffee. How long could that take?
DB went off to get the coffees while I paid for the food. The Costa in the entrance was just closing, so he had to go to the main one. I joined him. There was a short queue in front of us. I don't know how it can take quite so long to deal with so few customers. There were two baristas, and I wondered if there was a hidden camera somewhere. There was one person after us in the queue, then no one.. We paid for our order and joined the queue waiting for the coffees to be made.
The Baristas worked hard to avoid catching the last man's eye. Thet walked up and down fetching things, and neither of them had the customer service skill to look at him and say'sorry about the wait Sir, I'll be with you as soon as I can'. The chap was getting a bit fed up (I was getting fed up on his behalf). I could see that he wanted to walk off...but there was no where else to go.
Eventually, we got our coffees. Our 5 minutes (which we had expected to be about 15 really, allowing for queing) was over 40 minutes.
