It's yesterday afternoon, it's raining, and it's time to bring the retail therapy project to a close.
2:00pm Mathmos, Old Street
The rain's pounding down as I drip out of Barbican station and into the funky Mathmos shop. Look, there they are in all their glory, the Flip and Faze tumbler lights that readers to diamond geezer have voted I should buy myself as a birthday present. Very tasteful. The Mathmos shop doubles as a showroom and an office, and at the moment everyone's in the office, not the shop. I stand and wait at the counter for a good three minutes before the assistant notices me. Plenty of time, if my retail backbone had started to wither, for me to decide I really didn't want to buy them after all and to sneak back out into the downpour. However, my readers' decision is final, and I will have one of each please Mr Assistant. There's a special offer of a free lava lamp if you spend more than £125 in one go, and I'm just £25.10 short, but the retail bug hasn't bitten so deep that I fall for buying something else just to buy a freebie that I didn't want either. A quick swipe of the plastic and I'm walking out with my two chosen presents, and smiling.
2:55pm Arsenal shop, Finsbury Park
I'm even wetter by the time I reach the premiership's top retail hub. I'm on a retail roll, and there's this tasteful rugby top I have my eye on. An Arsenal rugby top seems a bit of a contradiction, but it appears to be one of the few products they have in stock in my size. I shall have to be careful wearing it out round the streets of London E3, because West Ham fans are rarely keen to be reminded of Arsenal top when they tend to be hammered bottom.
3:45pm Purves & Purves, Tottenham Court Road
This is a great shop in which to practise retail therapy. The shop is full of beautifully designed, mostly useless but definitely overpriced gadgets and homeware. Half the items on the shelves scream "Buy me", even though you know you'd get them home, grin at them once, leave them in a cupboard and then never ever use them. I wandered purposefully through the store, trying very very hard to feel like buying something. Surely I'd like a weeble-type chrome clock, or a giant orange spacehopper, or an aerolatte milk frother, or some cufflinks shaped like dice, or a magic bunny toothpick holder, or a liquid mousepad. In the end I failed to want anything in there for myself, at least at the prices they were charging, although I hope my Mum likes what I found in there for her birthday tomorrow. Actually, I might go back later myself for the cufflinks shaped like dice...
4:15 pm R.I.A. Technologies, Tottenham Court Road
I carry on wandering up and down London's electrical/gadgety High Street, eagerly hunting down that GPS global positioning thing that someone recommended for my retail therapy project at the very last minute. As expected, at least fifteen of the tech bazaars down this street have them in stock. Look, there it is, the Garmin eTrex, small, yellow and desirable. OK, it's still the size of a small brick, and it's still £10 more expensive than BWfound on the net, but let's test my newly-honed haggling powers on the staff. I explain, very convincingly, that I could buy the eTrex on the internet for £20 less than they're offering. The salesman says that nobody down TC Road would be offering it that cheap, but he'll do it for £12 less. This is of course £2 less than they're really selling it for on the net, so I snap one up at a bargain price. I think I'm learning how to shop properly.
5:30pm DG Mansions, London E3
Home at last, heavily laden with bags. As well as all the above, I've also managed to return home with two birthday cards, a new rechargeable battery for my mp3 player, a less-than-half-price 2003 calendar, a red nose and a bagful of food from Sainsburys. That makes a grand total of £275.21 spent in one afternoon. Did I really manage that much? Excellent.
Time to get the Mathmos light bricks out of their excessive packaging, smile because they're already fully charged, and stick them both on the table to illuminate the room as the sun sets. They glow and pulsate with coloured light in a most pleasing way and are a welcome addition to my material wealth. Quick tip - if you're thinking of following in my footsteps and buying one, the Faze is probably better than the Flip because it changes colour without needing to be touched, which is far more satisfying for the couch potato in us all.
Finally I stick two batteries in my yellow ("bright yellow color, easy to find if dropped") GPS personal navigator, and head back out of the front door. The first time you use the device you have to stand in an open area to make sure that it locates as many geostationary tracking satellites as possible. The manufacturers recommend standing in a large park, or somewhere out in the wilderness next to a babbling brook, but I guess correctly that standing by the Bow flyover will do just as well. Then, once the US Defense department have located me (thinks, hmmm, maybe this isn't such a good idea after all...) I walk back home in a west-southwesterly direction at 3.6kmh. I stop just outside the front door, and am rather pleased to discover that I live exactly 0°1'2" west of the Greenwich meridian. This gadget is another winner.
The retail therapy project(conclusion)
Retail success in all areas I think. I have not one but two great gadgety presents and a smile on my face, and all purchased and fully functional just in time for my birthday tomorrow. I've proved that there are things out there that I do actually want, and will buy. Whether my shopping ability will remain buoyant in the future has yet to be seen, of course, and I still think you'll be hard-pushed to ever find me crowding the weekend aisles at IKEA, but it's a start. Thank you all for my therapy. I wonder what I want to buy next...?
The retail therapy project (the final shopping trip)
