A very pleasant morning

Isn't it lovely when what starts off as an ordinary morning turns into one of pleasant surprises? - well that was ours last week. We had to go into Sheffield to collect some crockery Jonathan had ordered from Homebase so decided we would call into Go Outdoors to look at fleeces on our way back. Although the fleece was for me I soon got bored looking at them as they were the same old colours. Why do they think that women want dirty pinks and purples? David on the other hand could easily spend any amount of time looking at various 'bits of kit' and it can take several minutes to get him out of there. Having got him out and got to the car I suddenly remembered the cafe round the corner and felt the need for a coffee, suggested it and two minutes later we were in The Harland



It's a great place with tables and squashy sofas 



smiling hosts




and gorgeous cakes



A gem of a place which you wouldn't readily stumble across if you didn't know about it. We were interested to read all about their evenings of live music and have made a mental note to book one. After our coffees and shared gorgeous salted caramel chocolate brownie (at only £5-40) we moved on to Decathlon. No suitable fleece there but as we were parked opposite the new indoor market we took a stroll across.



What a thoroughly pleasant half hour spent there. It was rather quiet which meant plenty of room to walk round and explore the variety of stalls. There was a good haberdashes with some lovely fabrics (made mental note to revisit) , several Afro Caribbean stalls, Chinese and Asian stalls plus butchers, fishmongers and a very good cheese stall selling local cheeses as well as some as far away as Cornwall. Whilst there we decided that some purchases were in order and bought a bag of beef bones (50p) to make some good stock as a base for French onion soup, neck of lamb (£3) for stew and dumplings and chicken livers (£1) which has been made into three pots of pate. I would have loved to take advantage of the Afro Caribbean foods on offer but not knowing much about their cuisine I will need to do some research - I can see a little session on Pinterest coming up.
But what a pleasant morning we had ended up having after just going out to pick up a box of pots!