Shopping has always been hellish, unless it’s a shop that sells CDs, books or pies. I remember enduring the unalleviated damnation of wandering along the footprints at IKEA lost as in the seven circles of Dante’s Inferno. Eventually I discovered that if I went in the exit and swung myself over the turnstile, I could go straight to my target, buy and leave unsinged by the flames of hellfire. For me shopping is about needing something and then going into town to buy it. It should be conducted like a bank raid or SAS snatch raid - leave the car with engine ticking over and getaway driver as close to the target store as possible, rush straight to the appropriate display, having done your research previously, grab, pay, leave, drive away. There should be none of this looking around, fingering everything on the clothing racks, suddenly remembering that you need something you’ve never mentioned before or of which you’ve already got a wardrobe full. Then there is none of the extra diversion of checking in case there are bargains so you get two of something you don’t need for the price of one. After standing around with my back aching and bored stiff I normally cause the expedition to be curtailed as I descend into darker and darker moods. My advice to Debenhams and all those stores that are no longer profitable would have been, provide a chair and a copy of the Guardian to your clientele’s partners and they could spend a fortune before being noticed. Too late now!
Whatever we were doing with our computers before the lockdown, has now increased exponentially. Communication, play, information retrieval and shopping are now negotiated somewhere in the ether. Shop assistants trying to palm off something extra on you have been replaced by even more irritating pop-ups and algorithms. I’m beginning to miss the shops. Now it's being presented with an impenetrable list of choices, diverted off to bargains, losing your way back again, losing your whole basket before you get to checkout, arriving there and finding you can’t have one of the items, so back again to the impenetrable list and lose your whole basket again, find it and it’s been doubled, so delete half and start again. Then be pestered with vouchers, subscriptions, permission to receive emails, accept cookies, tempted with people who purchase this also purchase that, recommendations, do you want to open an account, what’s your password, forgotten your password? Reset your password, you appear to have an account already. Arrive at checkout, can’t accept your card, card out of date, try another card, add post and packaging, recommend us to a friend and receive voucher so you can start again. And that’s just Amazon and it makes IKEA look as simple as a leisurely queue at an ice cream kiosk. I’ve not done a grocery order, Deirdre has done those, but I hear the running dialogue from several rooms away. And here’s a challenge, as of a few minutes ago I need a pair of 50cm black, round shoe laces. But one lace will do.
I did a click and collect from B&Q three or four weeks ago. I drove into an eerily empty car park and there on a palette lonely and unattended 1 of the 3 bags of compost I’d asked for and 2 hanging basket liners wrong size and a bottle of Weedol, which I felt like drinking. Bedding plants, seeds and compost were hard to come by at the time, so I spread the net widely and ordered them from every possible source. Weeks later I had forgotten what I had ordered and they all began to arrive, so I ended up with an avalanche of compost and a forest of bedding plants. There are so many items I’d ordered on-line and forgotten I’d ordered them, and so many I thought I’d ordered but apparently hadn’t.
‘Click and Collect in my mother’s day was a walk to Coleman’s the grocer’s with a list, read item by item over the great high counter to Mr Coleman who collected each product from the shelves behind him, while I perused my Chick’s Own comic on the counter and eyed the custard creams displayed in the open tins. Sugar and flower were weighed out into paper bags and bacon wrapped in grease proof paper. It may be false memory syndrome, but this Enid Blyton world of the small town grocer is my recollection. Of course you could have a delivery – not on-line but on a high handled bike with a metal carrier on the front ridden precariously by a grocer's boy. I tried riding one of these once with a full load, swerving and diving, toppling and tipping in and out of the two or three cars on the road.
I’m writing this rather than getting on to organise another B&Q on-line retail experience. How I long for Mr Page’s Hardware shop with its wicked axes hanging in the window, packs of rat poison and knife sharpening service. and no questions asked about your age.