right, halfords also known as halfrauds, hellfrauds avoid at all costs.
Now i have a cousin in law used to be a halfords mechanic, he is a cyclocross, road bike mtb fanatic, olympic tryouts amazing cyclist. cycling since he was born type thing. He was a halford mechanic and manager and i would trust him with my bike any day of the week.
there are also a good few members here did their stint at hellfrauds who seriously know their bikes, so its not all
however the majority of mechanics at hellfrauds are 16 years old, retarded or both.
local bike shops (LBS) needs support, im on my way to one now to replace 7 spokes and a true as i cant do wheels, but their labour isnt cheap. go to a well established LBS over halfords any day of the week. They arent cheap but will still be cheaper then halfords, think about £25 an hour for labour. e.g wheel true £10-15. full service replacing all cables £35 type thing.
do a search here for the word halfords and see what comes up
you found your way here and there is a wealth of knowledge here to deal with any bike problem, so i would say get a basic bike took kit and ask. Bikes aren't really that complicated i think.
saddles, again it really really depends.
if you havent been on a bike for 20 years use the sofa attached to the fury, your arse is going to hurt in any case. When you have a few miles under your belt you may well find that soft squishy thing a chaffing annoyance.
saddles are very personal and trial and error you see. I like flites, my arse likes flites. looking at them they dont really give much support as they are skinny things, but for some reason that works. many people like charge spoons which seems to suit a lot of arses. I have recently tried a charge spoon and it hurts my arse and thighs, but im going to persevere with it. there is no rhyme or reason to what saddle will suit you IMO. e.g then i also ride an x-lite saddle, a ponza saddle, a devo saddle
I have found that if you sit on anything long enough your arse gets used to it, not in a gay way you understand, but not that there is anything wrong with that sort of thing.
the good thing is that in the course of peoples trial and error trying to find a saddle that suits you will get many hardly used ones on the bay very cheap.