Shopping Trauma

"You don't shop much do you?" my friend laughed when explaining where I got my shoes from, I said, "You know, that cheap shop, only £4 a pair. I bought 3 pairs."

It's true. I don't really like shopping. I find it a bit traumatic but sometimes it's unavoidable and yesterday was one of those times. My daughter is heading back to University next week and obviously needed some new stuff. Parents who have just spent a fortune in Ikea to kit their 18 year old out for a year in halls need to know that there will be more stuff to buy for the second year. They will be in a student house with a double bed, so they will need new bedding; their wok will have been used by all 20 of their flat mates in halls, never washed up, gone rusty, smell of meat; their sharp knife will have gone missing and they won't have been able to buy another one because they are not 21. Parents won't necessarily have to pay for all this because a year away, learning about the cost of pot noodles, will have fostered a small sense of financial independence but you will still be required to be present for the trip, if only to carry the bags and buy the knife. 

If I was being forced to shop then I thought it would be a good idea to buy some new clothes.  My winter wardrobe is looking tired, shabby, a bit holey and someone seems to have tightened the waistband on all my trousers and skirts. (listen to me - winter wardrobe - I sound like a fashionista) 

The main problem with not shopping very often is the shock at how much everything costs. £50 for a pair of trainers! The last time I bought trainers they were £30 and I thought that was expensive. 

When you are used to shoving a top in your trolley as you dash round Tesco for the weekly food shop everything about buying clothes properly seems alien. You shuffle round a crowded shopping centre bemused by so much choice. There are beautiful, well cut clothes in material that won't develop holes, in shops staffed by women with hair and faces that don't move, that you need to take out a mortgage to buy. In the shops staffed by young gum-chewing slim blonde girls there are clothes that probably cover less than my underwear. There are dresses that would be great but someone seems to have cut a hole to expose the least flattering part of a woman.

A dress designed for love-handle splillage

 Even the mannequins look odd in these shops. Then there are the cheap shops, with their jumble sale atmosphere, material so thin you can read your newspaper through it (newspaper! - I mean i-phone, of course) and surprises when you get to the till as the bored sales assistant tells you that your £5 shoes only cost £4 after all.

If you are lucky enough to find something that you can imagine wearing then the changing room becomes another trauma. You strip to your bra and pants in a tiny curtained box, with the gap, so that everyone walking past can see you. The bright lights and full length mirror show up every lump, bump and particularly the dark circles under your eyes. You wonder if the shop got their fittings from a Fair's Hall of Mirrors. You struggle into the clothes, thinking that it can't get worse as you bang your elbow on the only solid wall and then you look in the mirror. Who do they make these clothes for? How can a dress make you look worse than you did in your underwear? If that wasn't traumatic enough then there is the issue of struggling out of the dress. I don't know if this has ever happened to you but when you are in a tiny changing room with a dress stuck, half on, half off, covering your face, blocking your nose, preventing proper breathing panic does start to set in.

I did manage to buy something. A nightshirt, more £4 shoes and a book. A book can keep you warm and your feet dry through the winter, right?