I want to talk about shopping. And to do so I need to discuss that most sensitive of subjects: gender!!!

I’m not saying that all women love to shop whilst all men would gladly RIP OUT THEIR OWN FUCKING EYES WITH A BLUNT, RUSTY T-SPOON!!! rather than to accompany them, because that would be a crude and facile gender stereotype paradigm which would be quite frankly, beneath me. True as it may be.

But today, in Christchurch, I (was dragged screaming) gladly agreed to a ‘wee shopping spree’ accompanied by the Shopoholic Twins. Either of whom could render you suicidal when in shops on their own. But together, the total is way greater than the sum of the parts.

I thought this phobia was possibly mine and mine alone. The whole shopping thing. But then I saw a young couple walking towards me, towards the way out of the store. And the look on the man’s face was one of ‘salvation at hand’, of ‘rescue from damnation’. A look of profound hope. Then, just as he was accelerating doorwards, ‘the woman!’, be she girlfriend, wife, short-term-rental or whatever, just pulled his arm and said: ‘oh, just a minute, darling’ and wandered over to look at one more dress, one more shoe, one more bit of coloured plastic, one scarf, one tea towel, one absolutely fucking anything.

And his face looked so despairing, so ‘shot down on the final approach’, so suicidal, so… so… so much like mine did that I had a revelation. That in fact it must be ALL men who hate shopping and all women who love it.

Yet that’s obviously wrong. It’s a generalisation and generalisations are always wrong. Ha, ha. Because, like everything else these days, this is not binary. It’s not about love/hate of shopping. It’s deeper. It’s about the way we shop.

Men need a car, they go to the showroom. They want music, they go the music store. They want trousers, they just go to the pub and tell their wives the shop had sold out of trousers. But it is specific. We shop FOR THINGS. Whereas women just shop. For fucking anything. Whatever catches their eye, a good bargain, a pretty colour, something… something… that I don’t have. Might be a lampshade in a new colour, a dress that is different from the 12,764 currently in the wardrobe, shoes, table mats, rugs, throw cushions, scarves, heated towel rails, a yacht, FUCKING ANYTHING!!!!! And of course, to buy ‘anything’ you must first examine ‘everything’.

It’s the sheer randomness that kills you. The pure directionless examination of every single item in every single category of items that makes it all such incredible agony.

And this on a great morning which started with ‘just’ a 7-nil win for Spurs. Whilst I was having breakfast. How brilliant. Next year I may have to go away on holiday for the entire season to ensure such amazing results. Llorente? Never doubted him. Errr…

Very happy Saturday

A xxxx