On Shopping

Shopping is a miserable experience. One trudges around streets and aisles, careful not to bump into anyone, and seeks out sustenance. Gift buying is the worse. Yes, it may be better to give than to receive, but first you have to decide what it is you want to give, or what the recipient might desire to receive. Then you might find it and price it, and if it feels too expensive, search elsewhere or move onto option B, which might not exist until you invent it in a moment of either inspiration or desperation.

I was in the city centre for two hours last Saturday, and I felt I hardly bought anything. My number of daily steps, including walking home, was just under 10,000. I laid my meagre trove on our table, ready to remove price tags and stickers and store away: two Christmas cards and three minor gifts. So much effort for so little.

A colleague of my does all his shopping online. He refuses to go to the stores, will actively avoid the physical high street. Beyond arguments about the decline of town centres and the impact this has on the economy, I envy his ability. I rarely know what to get people, must walk around and peruse the stores and hope that I will be somehow guided towards finding the right gift, the item that someone truly needs and will use. And of course, while you’re doing this, you must also avid the temptation just to buy things for oneself that you inevitably find along the way. Perhaps some outlets rely on such pathetic shoppers: how else does one explain the proliferation of candles and hand soaps that appear each Christmas time?

Not having children, we have avoided the experience of having to receive terrible gifts from offspring, of having to fake interest and delight at some piece of tat or ill-thought jumper, neck scarf, slippers the wrong size, etc. I cringe at the thought of what rubbish my young self must have purchased for my parents. The worst was possibly a book on the history of cricket for my dad, written by ex-prime minister John Major. My mum actually laughed and asked why I got that for him: because I had no other ideas. On a school friend to London, I knew that the done thing was to bring back a souvenir for my folks. 11-year-old me spotted lots of tourist crap and decided that a small hand mirror with an image of Prince Charles and Prince Diana printed on it would suit. Do not ask me the logic behind my choice. It was stuffed at the bottom of a bedroom drawer (quite rightly), and probably quietly disposed of when we moved house.