Behold my super-elite e-Bay skillz! Or rather how I got lucky on ebay.
Last week I rec'd a changing mat I had bid on (£5 inc postage which was a pain as the seller only lived 5 miles away but had already posted when I suggested I'd collect). Changing mat was a Winnie the Pooh one, with a detachable towel, not that I really cared. a mat is a mat is a mat. Fast forward to last night when I won an auction for a moses basket and stand (the cot we bought last year off eBay is a bit too big to be in our bedroom). Before the auction ended I looked to see what else the seller had on offer and she had a bathing set (bath, towel, top and tail bowl, bath thermometer). Now I wouldn't have necessarily bought a top and tail bowl, nor yet a thermometer (what is wrong with an elbow I ask?), but no-one else had bid for it, so I put in for the asking price, plus, miracles or miracles, it was also Winnie the Pooh. So without meaning to, I am now the owner of a Winnie the Pooh changing mat, baby bath, top and tail bowl and towel all for £10 in total [1]. Plus as they are all a pale yellow, they actually match the colour of the nursery walls. That's serendipity for you. Now I just have to collect it all from Andover.
However just to demonstrate I am not a total domestic goddess, this morning I had already poured out my bran flakes into my bowl before discovering we didn't have enough milk. Thankfully Gibbins did not berate me for being a slovenly housewife [2] and instead whisked me off to work earlier and treated me to a sausage bap at brewed Awakening, a lovely little cafe behind the School of Health Professions and Rehabilitation Services. He knows how to attract my slavish devotion. And also how to pick up on very broad hints along the lines of 'never mind, we could always go out for breakfast'.
[1] The bath set, including a wash mitt and sponge which I won't have, retails for £30 and changing mats with towel are in the region of £10 (in fact the towel alone costs £6.99 at babiesRus).
[2] He knows better. Besides he's the milk drinker out of the two if us, so it anyone should have noticed...