Christmas Shopping

Up very early as we had a viewing of the house so set off for the town centre at what felt like the crack of dawn. You can see from the picture of the Churchill Centre that it is still relatively quiet although the weather may well have had something to do with this. Lashing down with rain and so windy that it almost swept me off my feet on a few occasions. Had to wear my lovely hat that the family say makes me look like Miss Marples.
In the afternoon we set off for the Acqua Shard to meet family to celebrate the birthday of sister-in-law's sister! I delayed blipping last night as I was convinced that I would have wonderful images from this visit but was disappointed with the results. It was very dark in the room and the noise levels in the images were just too high. I am trying to decide what I could have done differently. A photo taken by my nephew on automatic mode did come out slightly better so it was clearly something I wasn't doing correctly with the new camera using my normal mode of manual settings. Maybe I should have taken my trusty Nikon as I am still more familiar with this - but it is just so heavy.
It was, though, a great experience. The views from the restaurant are spectacular.

Couldn't help reflecting on the fact that while this restaurant was full and the shopping centre was also busy over 350,000 people relied on foodbanks between April and September 2013, triple the numbers helped in the same period last year. Did keep these thoughts to myself though or I could well have been mistaken as Scrooge's second Ghost of Christmas Present.