Day Out In Dunoon

Yesterday I mentioned that part of my birthday included a day out to Dunoon. It's a favourite spot for us to visit because it's close to home, but far enough away that you feel like you're getting an adventure. To get there we drive through some pretty spectacular scenery and when we arrive there are plenty of little shops to keep me entertained.

Amazingly enough, not long after we arrived it started snowing! It continued to snow on and off all day; at one point on the way home it turned into a proper blizzard! According to Facebook this wasn't actually that unusual either, we had snow on my birthday last year as well.

Once we'd refuelled in a cafe we got down to the serious business of charity shopping. There was a time when each visit to Dunoon resulted in me bringing home a new coat. Not this time! Mr Click got himself a nice new jacket and I was well laden down with books and new (to us) DVDs.

Mr Click and I have a pretty good film collection; there are a few that we revisit regularly and some which we don't watch so often, but recently we've been turning to the same old films in our collection so I took this opportunity to add some new ones. One of the charity shops we went into had a 10 DVDs for £4.90 (or £1.99 each) and as soon as we started looking we found two we wanted. It was a bit tricky to find another eight but we managed and have already started watching our new films on a Saturday afternoon. That'll keep us going for another few months.

But perhaps the biggest highlight of the day out was our trip to Oxfam.

In the past I've had great success in getting books from this particular shop (on my last visit I got three new Kathy Reichs books, which are still sitting patiently on my bookcase waiting to be read; the time before that it was Terry Pratchett books). I didn't score any books on this trip, but I did get a different treat.

Every shop we went into, Mr Click made a point of telling the staff there that it was my birthday (resulting in a lot more birthday wishes) and Oxfam was no different. One of the women in the shop wished me Happy Birthday then produced a box of Milk Tray for me to help myself to a chocolate, Mr Click bought his jacket and we left.

Just outside the shop we paused to rearrange the bags we were carrying and we'd barely started to move on when the woman from the shop dashed out and asked us to come back into the shop. We did and no sooner had I stepped foot inside did they all start singing Happy Birthday!

Not only that, but one of the guys in the shop brought out a Jaffa Cake with a little candle stuck in the top for me to blow out!

And that's me looking very stylish, blowing out my Jaffa Cake.

It was such a lovely thing to do that on Saturday I had to post on the Oxfam Facebook page, asking them to pass on my thanks to the staff in the shop. It made our day.