Of Shambolic Shopping May 28, 2008
Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal , 27 commentsI don’t even know why I thought it a good idea. Last time lovely bf and me ventured to Ikea, we didn’t speak for an entire week.
Now and again though, I get this urge. I think I’m bored with the chickens and fields and wellies. I think I want to be a bit metropolitan. Reader, I don’t know what came over me but yesterday I went to Bluewater. Gawd.
There are several reasons I should not go to such places:
1. I am very crap at driving on motorways. When I learnt to drive in Jersey, there was none of this multiple choice of lane. No lurching, heaving lorries to squish my scaredyness until squeaks pop out of my mouth. If you drive too far or too fast in Jersey, you drop off the edge. Infinitely preferable method of dying to motorways.
2. I don’t like shopping. I am no good at it. I get bored after 20 minutes and decide that I will do the shopping after a jolly good lunch and some fortification of the vino-related type.
3. I am quite easily swayed. Self-control, in my book, is something to do with choosing to wear concrete pants and steel bras.
But, I had a foolproof plan. Ikea first, for the compulsory purchase of bookshelves and shoe racks. Then Bluewater, where I would single-mindedly hunt down a new pair of glasses as my lenses have mysteriously become so scratched that I can barely see. And no, it’s not like when I picked my Clarks school shoes apart with a compass point because I’d wanted some from FreemanHardyWillis. I honestly don’t know how they became scraped just as I’d gone off them. No, really.
Lovely bf had somehow been persuaded that this would be tolerable, if not fun.
‘Maybe we should just go to Bluewater,’ I ventured en route. ‘We can order the furniture online.’
Lovely bf mumbled something at the hard shoulder. It sounded a bit like ‘oh, for fuck’s sake’ but he’d been instructed to wear his happy face and the words weren’t coming out clearly through his gritted teeth.
I’ll cut a long story short. I still can’t see; the joy of specs was shortlived. Lunch at Loch Fyne was good though. Somehow or other, I came home with a fruit bowl and an SLR camera, having become a little overexcited about an idea for a book: a photo and haiku to mark every day for a year. Lovely bf was a trifle disappointed with his purchase of some headache tablets.
Four hours of driving, four hundred quid and eight hours of my life later I was broke and still blind. Oh dear. Perhaps I need more practice?
