You would think that as someone that hates shopping (unless it’s in a bookshop) I would welcome this development. I am grateful that the shops are less crowded but still worry about the future. Without shopping there will be no chance human interactions. No smiles from strangers; no random conversations in Marks and Spencer men’s department about how nothing makes you miss your dad more than the jumper section at Christmas; no overheard conversations. It would be lonely.
I am generally worried about the rise of technology on our health and not just our mental health. In the Long Suffering Husband’s favourite store I saw a woman looking at the Echo. She wasn’t sure but a random stranger came to her aid.
“They’re brilliant,” she told her, “I wouldn’t be without mine. Just for turning the lights on .....”
The LSH looked at me and mimed pressing a light switch. I panicked about a future where I would have to sit in the dark because I’d lost my voice and couldn’t tell the technology to turn the lights on.
No matter how many warnings I give about this bleak future, you won’t believe me. I am Cassandra.
The LSH and I decided not to buy everything from Amazon but go out and use real shops. His colleagues were incredulous at the suggestion and I did feel guilty for buying a book for £7.99 that would probably be free on the kindle but we were doing our bit to preserve actual shops.
In M&S we talked to the lady at the till about how quiet it was.
“Everyone shops online,”she said, oblivious to her future redundancy. “We all do it, don’t we?”
“Actually, we’re trying to use real shops. Use it or lose it,” we replied.
She was unrepentant.
“At least if you buy it online it’s fresh. It hasn’t been touched by any,” and here she shuddered, “children or anything.”
I can see it now. In the future those big shopping malls will be empty. Homeless ex-shop workers will be sleeping around the edges, while inside the lights and heating are bizarrely still on.
Back in the LSH’s favourite store, the one where my daughter had noticed a worker dusting the bins (never knowingly under-dusted), he had wandered off to find a secret Santa gift for someone he doesn’t know and there was a man trying to drum up interest in a board game. I love a board game and I felt sorry for him. Everyone was rushing past, looking at their phones, ordering their presents cheaper and fresher online.
“Let me explain it to you,” he said, “most people think they know a lot of words but they don’t. Let’s play?”
I didn’t walk away, he beamed from ear to ear.
“Rictus. Do you know what that means?”
“I think I do,” I said pointing at my mouth, “It’s when it goes stiff.”
I blushed realising that double-entendres with strangers in department stores are inappropriate.
He turned the card over.
“Errr...” He read slowly, started to talk about Bill Clinton’s expressions and then decided that it was just about right but he was disappointed that he hadn’t been able to give me the three options to guess from.
“Let’s try another one. Cassandra?”
“I know who Cassandra was. She was from Greek mythology: a beauty. One of the Gods, Odin maybe, fancied her and gave her gifts. She wasn’t interested despite him being a powerful god and so he raped her and cursed her so that she wouldn’t be believed.”
The LSH had returned.”It can’t have been Odin,” he said “He was a Norse God.”
The man was looking stressed that there were now two of us knowing stuff.
“So, I guess that a Cassandra is someone who tells the truth but isn’t believed.”
The man scratched his head and consulted his card.
“Wasn’t she to do with the Troy story?”
“Yes but that wasn’t the interesting part,” I said, climbing onto my soap box.
He read from his card. “ Yes, she was given the gift of being able to see the future by Apollo.”
“Odin -Apollo. They start the same,” I said to the LSH, proving that I can’t spell.
“Wasn’t He Roman?” asked the LSH, “I thought you said it was a Greek myth.”
“He cursed her to be not believed when she rejected him." the man ploughed on with his reading but I interrupted again.
"But he raped her anyway. He was a vicious God. A powerful man who was determined to get his own way and no one believed her. It's interesting when you think about the current climate, isn't it?"
"You know lots of stuff," said the man awkwardly.
I blushed again and apologised.
The man reached for another card but the LSH steered me away by the elbow, wondering how long the man would have tried to find a word I didn't know.
Maybe the poor man would be happier if my Cassandra vision of the future does come true. It might be better to be a homeless person sitting at the edge of an empty shopping centre than having to deal with people who know stuff and ruin your game.
"But he raped her anyway. He was a vicious God. A powerful man who was determined to get his own way and no one believed her. It's interesting when you think about the current climate, isn't it?"
"You know lots of stuff," said the man awkwardly.
I blushed again and apologised.
The man reached for another card but the LSH steered me away by the elbow, wondering how long the man would have tried to find a word I didn't know.
Maybe the poor man would be happier if my Cassandra vision of the future does come true. It might be better to be a homeless person sitting at the edge of an empty shopping centre than having to deal with people who know stuff and ruin your game.
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