Argos. The shop where you can order pretty much anything. Except when the product isn't available anywhere close to you and they can't deliver it either. This is the situation I found myself in the other week. I've been reorganising my bedroom to update it from the room I had as a 17 year old to the room of a 21 year old. I've got some new artwork (musical theatre themed, if you're interested), and a corkboard, which I collected from my local Argos store, but the issue revolved around jewellery boxes.
I'll admit, updating this is something which I should have done a while ago. I still had my old barbie one, which when I emptied it the other day also had a decent amount of cheap plastic kids jewellery in it. I finally found what I wanted, but I wanted two of it to enable me to not overfill them, and at less than £10 in the clearance, it was cheaper than the other box I had seen. I also saw a travel box, with a zip to keep it closed, which I thought would be useful for trips away (and this was something stupid like £2.50). The travel box wasn't too bad, as my nearest one was in Croydon, which isn't too far away. But the bigger, glass box, wasn't local, and if I wanted two I was going to have to travel to two different places: Didcot, and Gosport.
After struggling to purchase them, because of an issue with my bank card (the details had potentially been compromised so it was being replaced by my bank although they hadn't told me this), I had to get to the three different Argos stores within a week. My first trip involved me popping up to Croydon to collect the travel jewellery box and then down to Gosport to collect the first of the glass boxes, which were thankfully packaged pretty well and got home in perfect condition. I ticked off Portsmouth Harbour station and used the Gosport Ferry as well. It was a little bit hectic as I only had an hour and a bit to get to Gosport and back because of needing to be home for something that evening, but I made it work and even had chance to pick up a very late lunch on the walk back from Argos to the ferry.
My second trip, however, took me to some new stations. I'd been hoping to to a trip from Paddington to Oxford and return to Marylebone, however with needing to stop in Didcot this wasn't feasible sadly. My destination was Argos in sainsburys, which is thankfully very close to Didcot Parkway station and my trip up was largely uneventful, passing through Reading on the way up. I wanted the chance to be able to have a brief look around Oxford, so only had about 45 minutes to get to Sainsburys and back, which was fine. I managed to grab my order from Argos, grab a snack in the supermarket and then headed over to the nearby Starbucks for a drink. To my disappointment, the mobile app for Starbucks took my order, but technical issues meant the store didn't get it and there was no sign up saying that there was an issue with this, so I headed straight to the collection point. Having waited for almost as long as I could (around 10 minutes) before needing to head back to the station, I asked, given the fact that someone who had paid at the till after I had arrived had had their drink. The member of staff explained the issue however, when I showed the confirmation on my phone got my drink made quickly. I was, however slightly disappointed that there was no mention anywhere near the collection point that they had issues - at every other store I've been to they say head straight there, as did the app on my phone, however the member of staff told me in no uncertain terms that I should have queued up for the till to check it had gone through. I did point out that the point of the app was that we could go straight to the collection point and that I had used it because I didn't really have time to wait. Another Starbucks (Ealing, to be precise) that I've used had my drink ready pretty quickly after the order went in on the app and I didn't have to queue at the till.
I made my train up to Oxford with around 5 minutes to spare, and arrived in Oxford with around 45 minutes until my train back to Paddington. I looked online and saw that it would take around 25 minutes to do the walk into the city and back again, leaving me around 20 minutes to buy some lunch. I opted to place an order on the Mcdonald's app for collection in the city centre, which was ready quickly but then made my almost fatal mistake. I'd seen online that there was a branch of Ben's Cookies in the city, which looked really close to Mcdonalds. I am a fan of their cookies, so wanted to try and find it which I did although it took me a lot longer than I thought it would, leaving me to run back to Oxford station with a couple of minutes to spare before my train. I ended up eating my chicken nuggets and cookies on the train back to London!
All in all, this was a successful week as I managed to achieve everything I wanted to and ticked off some new stations: Portsmouth Harbour, Reading, Didcot Parkway, Oxford and Slough.
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