Archives for June 2011

I’d rather be home

There are some people who love the city. I’m not one if then. I’m not sure why I didn’t think about this today when I toddled off to the city for some retail therapy.

I was quite excited to have a morning to myself. Delighted in fact. I thought I would go to the city and suddenly I’d be transformed into the Westfield poster girl. I’d be tall and thin with legs stretched by the most adept photoshopper and I’d stride purposefully through the shops designer bags swinging by my sides. Yes. I am an advertisers wet dream.

I drove there. First mistake. I think that the Westfield poster girl gets dropped at the centre by a driver who actually knows the way there. I, on the other hand, got myself to somewhere in the vicinity of the parking stopped halfway through an intersection and phoned my husband to ask for his help. The conversation was very difficult, not only because he was having his hair cut at the time but also because I was trying to slide down the seat and pretend that my huge 4 wheel drive was not nestled amongst the pedestrians on George street.

Eventually I found the parking and had to spiral down to the centre of the earth to find an actual spot. I retained my cool. If cool means a hand clenched on the steering wheel and rising panic expressed as hiccups.

My second mistake was to go to the city on a very busy Saturday morning when the rest of Sydney had made the same decision. I realised as I battled my through a horde of spectators who were watching a busker play air guitar really badly that I don’t particularly like people en masse. I mean I like my friends and my family (most of them anyway) and I even meet strangers that I don’t recoil from. But in crowds, I do not like them.

My intention was to go to Zara. This was my third mistake. I expected Zara to be an elegant shopping mecca where all the clothes would not only suit me, but fit me perfectly and fall within my budget. I expected to come out of there overflowing with shopping bags a la Westfield model. Instead I came out clutching my chest and looking for air. There was no air – just throngs of people watching buskers.

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As I walked away from Zara dazed, confused and with not a single dollar spent I made my way to find the Metalicus store only to find that Westfield have come up with a brilliant new shopping directory, they only show you the names of the three most popular shops on their information board. Needless to say Metalicus is not one of their most popular shops. The reason it is not one of the most popular shops may well be because it is hidden very well. But I found it. I also found that the staff in the shop did not want to sell me anything. I think it may be because they like their merchandise so much they don’t want to part with it. But I soldiered on and found myself a tank top that I loved. It looked vaguely familiar but I thought that was just because I had imagined in my mind’s eye the perfect top to wear under almost anything and now I had manifested it in my head.

I went to the change room to try it on and it was only there that I realised the top that I was taking off to try on the new one was in fact the exact same garment as the one in my hand! I blushed, thanked my lucky stars that no-one had made eye contact with me and left.

I battled my way through more people, lots of prams, loud people urging me to sign petitions, small children crying, noisy people shopping, messy people eating, lonely people reading, angry people fighting, greedy people shoving.

What felt like 5 long days later (but was in fact only just over an hour) I returned to my car, paid the equivalent of a day’s salary to get out of the parking and drove around the city for ages looking for the way home.

There really is no place like home. Everything is where it’s meant to be, there are only three people there most of the time, the pace is a whole lot more manageable, the air is easier to breathe and while I know that I can’t be the Westfield model I can still shop online.