After a dinner-table conversation last weekend, somehow I agreed to escort my eldest daughter to a nearby town with a ginormous shopping centre. I didn’t actually need anything, but thought it might be a fun day out, and we’ve not done anything together for a while - so the “everything must be fair” part of my brain kicked in.
We left the house a little after 9:30 this morning - wrapped in jumpers and coats to defeat some really quite impressive driving rain. The train left at 10am - almost like clockwork - and delivered us to our destination somewhat successfully. I say somewhat, because I automatically made my way to the train platform for London-bound trains mid-route. Thankfully my daughter realised and laughed at me.
I’ll blame the cold. Or getting old. Or being a bit of an idiot sometimes.
The next several hours were spent wandering around a huge shopping centre called “The Oracle”. As far as I am aware, there is no “oracle” in “The Oracle” - it’s just a load of big department stores, flogging their wares at you from every angle.
While wandering along, I remarked how absolutely potty it must make people feel that work in that environment all day, every day. Imagine the canned music - the succession of customers - the inevitable layers of middle management - the jobsworth floor staff…
I somehow came home with nothing. It wasn’t for want of trying. I made it to the gigantic Apple Store in “The Oracle”, and discovered it was just as frustrating and annoying as every other Apple Store - with an army of blue shirted lunatics that you must have a conversation with about the thing you want, rather than just grabbing the thing you want, and paying for it.
I swear - if Google or Amazon ever launch self-service brick-and-mortar stores, they will decimate Apple. Most people buying tech stuff know damn well what they want, and just want to get it - not talk about it, be up-sold on it, or anything else.
Deep breaths. Again.
My younger charge bought an eyebrow pencil (I’ve probably called it the wrong thing), some bath bombs, some socks, and a few other bits and pieces. I treated us to sushi at lunchtime.
While eating and chatting about this and that, I asked my daughter if she had seen the movie “Wicked Little Letters” yet - she had not. I started giggling to myself - recalling lines from the movie - and she asked what was so funny. I looked around, and thinking there was nobody nearby, recounted one of the most horrific sweary lines from the movie. Moments later we got up, and I discovered there had been a girl sitting DIRECTLY behind me as I quoted the horrific line. I thought I might die. Oh how I wished the world could have opened up and swallowed my whole.
While leaving, I glanced over, and realised the girl was wearing headphones. She hadn’t heard a thing.
You have never seen a middle-aged-man look so relieved in your entire life.
Before coming home we re-visited the shopping mall, and I wandered into a huge record store. I ALMOST bought several vinyl records for the record player. I’m not sure why I didn’t in the end. I guess part of it is down to our house being so chaotic at the moment. There’s typically seven of us around of an evening - which makes finding any quiet corner pretty much impossible - let alone getting the lounge to yourself to listen to some music.
In consolation, I bought a huge bag of peanut M&Ms on the way home, and followed the labelling on the bag - to share them. I ended up giving the second half of the bag to my daughter, then wondered where on earth she had put them all when she handed me the wrapper a few minutes later.
Anyway.
Somehow five of my nine days off work have already gone. How has that even happened? I’m going to slow things down tomorrow - on purpose. Probably go out for breakfast, get some chores done, and try to tidy the house up a bit. I also need to figure out what I’m going to do with the blog. Alongside the whole cross-posting escapade (which will continue), I’ve been tinkering with Ghost (an alternative to Wordpress, Tumblr, and Substack) - spectacularly unsuccessfully so far. Their own techs have singularly failed to setup a domain name - for reasons unknown at this point. I’m not sure I even care any more.
Maybe I’ll take a step sideways, sit down, and actually try to read some blogs tomorrow, rather than relentlessly charge towards the next thing, and the next thing, and the next. I need to SLOW THE HELL DOWN.