I have heard it said — and you may wish to correct me on this — that there are “shops” and next week they will be opening. I do not think I know what “shops” are. Maybe I did once, but that was a long, long time ago. I have heard it said — and again, you may wish to correct me on this — that when you go to a “shop” you can, for instance, actually touch an item before buying it or not. Pick it up. Feel it. Sniff it. Stretch it. Tug on a button to check it’ll hold.
Can this be true? Or is this yet another one of those April Fools that have gained traction? I have even heard that you can buy items on the spot and take them with you, directly. And targeted ads for slippers won’t follow you home, then all over the house and into your dreams. Nice idea, but really?
The more I look into it the stranger it becomes and the more I’m convinced it’s all phooey. First, I’ve heard that you have to leave the house. And get properly dressed and everything. Put your feet into “shoes”, and maybe brush your hair and pluck the chin hairs that have come thick and fast. Very thick and very fast.
Can this be right? Is this what going to a “shop” involves? If so, I don’t like the sound of it at all. And can’t, personally, see a future in it. When I can sit at home and click for all the junk I don’t need and have it brought to the door by a delivery driver who has no rights and is awarded no bathroom breaks and has to pee in a bottle. Tell me, what’s wrong with that?
And say what you like about targeted ads, don’t they know you better than you know yourself? Would you have bought that beard oil otherwise or pre-paid for your funeral? Would you want to go to your grave with an unruly beard and in a crappy coffin because no one else wanted to stump up?
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Before carrying on we must, I suppose, establish what we mean by “properly dressed”. As far I can gather, you will know you are properly dressed when you feel something happening in the waist area that isn’t elasticated and when you feel the dig of a wired undergarment caging your breasts.
Breasts aren’t going to be happy and will probably need a good talking to along the lines of: “I’m sorry. If it were up to me, you’d jiggle freely and boisterously as per. But we are off to ‘the shops’. Now, come on, my beauties, in you pop.” You may need to encourage them in with a treat. They may whimper, but don’t let them out again. You’ll only be making a rod for your own back.
Next, you must leave the house. I know. Crazy, crazy, crazy. But I’m just telling you what I’ve heard. How will you know you’ve left the house? I’m guessing by the change in ambient temperature and because you are no longer passive-aggressively circling the blackened ovenware you shouldn’t have to wash up because it wasn’t you who used it, and which you’ve been doing since . . . also, a long, long time ago.
To get to the “shop” you will have to visit a “high street” or go “into town” where the “shop” will be in a building made of bricks and will actually exist, which is mad. And it gets madder still. You cannot only fondle, feel, sniff, stretch and tug at goods, but, if it’s clothes, you can try them on. You can do it in Toast, say, and decide it’s not for you, there and then, rather than ordering it because you keep forgetting you are not flat-chested and over 6ft 2in.
Then, get this, you’ll hand payment over to another living human being who will bag the item and give it to you and “Whoa”, you’ll think. “This other living human being doesn’t want me to choose a shipping option? This other living human doesn’t want to pee in a bottle while delivering it to me next day? Meanwhile, I believe you can pay in ‘cash’, but don’t know what that is.”
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So that’s what I’ve heard about “the shops” and maybe I’ll give it a go and maybe I won’t. Either way, can’t see it catching on.
Beware the SUV with hazards on
There were calls this week to ban adverts for “Chelsea tractors” in a bid to stop them clogging up roads, particularly in urban areas. (Three quarters of SUVs are registered to urban addresses.) Victoria Wood once wrote brilliantly about this. Why, she asked, do so many drive these 4x4s in London. Just to deliver little Oliver or little Olivia to school? Answer: “Is it in case they encounter a low-sugar Ribena slick on Highgate Hill?”
They double park near the schools, but with their hazards on, so that’s OK. Or they mount the pavement, forcing pedestrians to walk into the road, but also with their hazards on, so that’s OK. Thank God for the hazards that make everything OK. But why? Why, why, why?
Such vehicles make no sense in the city and are so dangerous. What do they want in a car? Just something that will kill the family in the other car if there were a crash? What do they say at the dealers? “Hey, Bob, I’m looking for a something that’ll easily slaughter a family of four. I do like the grille guard on that one. No one is going to survive a run in with that, are they? But that’s OK. I’ll just put my hazards on.”
