Coping With the Credit Crunch

by Alex Allen

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I know it's a bit of a cliche, but going Christmas shopping with your girlfriend, sister or any other female family member? What a nightmare. You'll be strolling along, and suddenly they'll vanish like mist and duck in to literally any shop. Sometimes you might be walking and actually be in the middle of a conversation, and suddenly realise you've just been rambling on to nobody for the last five metres. Suddenly, their phone, which was working just three minutes earlier, is either off or on silent and you're very aware that you're literally the only man in Monsoon, but without the girl you were originally with you've got no real reason for being there. In this predicament I find you're generally faced with three choices. One - peruse the items, I did this once in New Look which actually has a men's section, who knew? It was rubbish, but I had extremely low expectations. Two - Play with your phone, and hope the problem just fixes itself. Three - Sit on one of the specially assembled 'man chairs', which is probably the most depressing sight I've ever seen. It's like a creche for adults, a line of men who seem to have lost all spirit or hope that their wife or girlfriend will eventually finish trying on the 'couple of things' they disappeared with twenty five minutes ago, eagerly staring at the changing room entrance hoping the next woman out will be the one they came with.

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Because of that, it's put a whole new positive spin on the credit crunch. I assume that if there are less shops, then that can only lead to a more simple and easy shopping experience for me (ignoring the fact that we won't have any money to spend, recessions are generally considered a bad thing, and my logic is pretty misguided for other reasons, too). Despite those drawbacks, I think you have to take what you can get in this sort of situation. Instead of my fantasy, which basically involved Miss Selfridge, Warehouse and my personal nemesis Accessorize (where no matter where I stand, I'm always in someone's way) all vanishing, it's all gone to shit. None of those places have closed, and instead I've lost Woolworths and Zavvi. Pick and Mix, gone forever. The children of 2009 will never know what fizzy cola bottles or synthetic chewy bananas taste like, or probably what a cavity feels like either. Today, I thought things were on the up when I heard Whittards was on the rocks. Obviously, I feel sorry for the people involved, but as a concept I'm not a fan and was fucking delighted. For one thing, I don't like coffee, and that's really quite a fundamental problem with being in shop that sells, well, just tea and coffee. Also, it was always a pointless expedition, a bit like when you get dragged in to Lakeland to look at bread makers or banana peeling machines. You spend ten minutes smelling different coffees, which secretly you think all smell exactly the same, and eventually leave without buying anything. I suppose that was probably the problem. They should have charged people to smell the stock, hindsight is a wonderful thing. When I rang my girlfriend to basically inform her of what I thought was a great shopping victory for me, it, again, all went to shit. Now there's going to be a closing down sale, and we have to go. These closing down sales are pretty surreal. Meandering around Woolworths last week was like being present at the end of the world, an apocalyptic scene of rows of empty shelves, fat women with gold jewellery heading for the tills with as many scouring pads as their podgy hands can carry. Shudder. I'm beginning to realise that shopping wasn't a battle I was ever meant to win, but here's hoping for an Accessorize free world by 2010.