Shopping

Shopping.

I can’t stand going shopping on Saturdays. I used to work nights in a bar, so I was one of the fortunate few who could go during the week, but now I’m relegated to Saturdays along with the masses. And it stinks. Maybe I’ve become less tolerant towards people than I used to be, but can you blame me? There are the women with pushchairs running over every body's ankles, and their snotty nosed little monster children screaming at the top of their voices “MAAMEEEE! I WANT SOME SWEEEEETIES!”

There are the students, bustling around in their TopShop/New Look 80s ripped, overly baggy, neon coloured clothes, Emo/goth/skater kids mooching around, flicking their chin length fringes out of their faces, tripping up pensioners on skateboards, and bemoaning the fact that Jared from 10B is going out with Becky, and why oh why won’t their mum let them get a tattoo? There are the happy couples, holding hands and locked at the mouth, groping along blindly, and totally oblivious to the fact that their disgustingly overt PDAs are causing chaos with the general ebb and flow of human traffic.

Then we get onto the seriously annoying. The clipboard people. The ones who stand there looking all brave and keen, trying to save the rain forest, or the lesser spotted Christmas- Tree-Weasel, or a kid called Billy from Nova Scotia who needs an operation to remove his hands from his Nintendo 64 console pad. And don’t think “Oh, they’re just doing their job.” Yes, they’re doing a job, and getting paid £11.60 an hour to badger people for money. A really good way to deal with these people is to shout “Look Out! A giant badger!” whilst pointing behind them, and run away while they turn around. My personal favourite is to smile sweetly, keep walking and say “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English!” – gets them every time.

There are also the 12 and 13 year old girls, with their skally hair scrapped back into ponytails so tight that their eyelids are stretching, wearing earrings the size of satellite dishes and blowing smoke over their baby’s pram, whilst discussing the latest evictee from Celebrity Big Brother “That was well harsh, chucking her out just coz she sucked off a cameraman…yeah, I love that Dermot, he’s wicked.”

But the very worst encounters you’ll have on the high street don’t occur whilst dodging between shops, in McDonald's, or even in the discount record store (full of pale 20somethings spacing out to the latest tunes from Chemical for My Bullet Ridden Half Brother, desperately in need of some vitamin C). Oh no. It’s that mythical, magical place of strange treasures and lost Empires. Yes, I’m talking about….Primark!

I never knew true madness until I first went into Primark. There is a palpable tension apparent as soon as you go through the doors, a watched feeling, almost of if there is a presence within the shop that is aware of every single being that enters its domain. It doesn’t matter how much activity is going on in front of you: for that first brief second, like Charles Marlow before you, you can hear the drums, and you know something is waiting.
This vanishes almost immediately as you are knocked down by a phalanx of stunted, sallow faced girls, under the charge of a middle aged bat called Doris. (She’s always called Doris. This is clearly the result of a genetic experiment from the 90s when there was a lack of grey haired bossy women in clothes shops, so the government decided to mass produce them). Doris is frog marching her flock towards the nearest pile of jumble on one of the tables, where they start to re-fold things. Their entire day is spent re-folding items of clothes, a futile exercise as they are inevitably followed by a pack of sadistic 40 year olds, who scuttle behind them, touching and stroking, and unfolding everything again. Folding and unfolding.

The girls all have an expression of hope as they see you coming, wondering, wishing that you’ll ask them a question, or for help, but it is not to be. You walk past slowly, feeling their eyes burning into the back of your neck, pleading silently for an escape, a release from the monotonous hell. The hot guilt sweeps up your face. It’s worse than passing beggars in the street. Can you imagine anything worse than folding things for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? I think it should be used as a deterrent against serious crime. Forget the death sentence. Make them fold!

Where was I? Oh yes…so you’re in the store and you’ve just picked yourself up and are moving away from Doris, when you get run over by that woman with the pushchair again. By now the toddler’s voice has reached a pitch so high only dogs can hear them, and is throwing a temper tantrum on the floor. So you decide to walk very quickly towards the shoe and accessory floor, but this is impossible, as all possible walkways and escalators are packed with girls and young women scrabbling over low cut t-shirts for 57p. A fight breaks out when one of them discovers a sale rail that was hidden behind a security guard, and this eases the crush, allowing you to jump onto the escalator, to the relative peace of the second floor.

This is the men’s department, and is full of sobbing, whimpering skeletal figures, clutching a handful of bedraggled items on clothes hangers, howling for the women they came in with, like a heard of lost baby elephants calling for their mothers. The shop floor, like the plains of the Serengeti, is bare, and merciless. One of them turns around, and grabs onto your cardigan:
“You have to help me! I’ve been here since the summer sale and it’s nearly October!”

Luckily, due to his malnutrition, his fingers are easy to pull away, so you are able to carrying on up towards the handbags and spangly ear-rings, until you are interrupted again, by a soft humming noise, like a nursery rhyme being mumbled in a low voice. After looking behind several corners, you come across a circular rail, and discover the assistant manager hiding in the middle of it. He is in the foetal position, sucking his thumb. He looks up, like a startled bunny, and puts his hands up to ward you off.
“ Oh, god, I’ve already told the others! We haven’t GOT any more red ballet pumps! Please god, believe me! They’re ALL GONE! “ He starts sobbing again, so you leave him.

Then, from behind you, you feel eyes again. There is a wizened old man with a mop right behind you. He is wearing slippers, and has a mad look in his eye. As he shuffles towards you, and beckons you closer, you suddenly remember the sense of unease at the door. His foul breath seeps over your face, melting your plastic earrings into even more misshapen blobs, and he beckons towards you. You want to run, but are trapped because your kitten heel is stuck in a gap in the floor. Then he whispers, “ I’ve been here since 1997. You’ve seen the others,….you’ll never get out!” Everything suddenly crashes down in one monstrous blow, dashing all your hope, your dreams, and making you weak with fear.
For you now know the true nature of the beast. You will become like the people you hate, as Primark has claimed another victim. The horror…the Horror!