The wild ride

By Alison
24 March, 2007
Comments Off on The wild ride

Want some excitement in your dull, monotonous, routine little life?

Want your adrenaline levels to rise to dangerous levels and blood pressure to threaten to hit the roof?

Want to be incited to violence despite the fact that you are a conciencious objector? Be arrested for beating a granny to death with a breadstick? Thrill as you shove innocent bystanders into the path of an oncoming 73? Laugh in the face of death as you take a white knuckle ride through the world that is consumerism? Laugh like a maniac? Bwuahahahahahah!!

There is only one answer.

Go shopping. In London. In summer.

It has been a few months now, and I am beginning to overcome the mental blocks that my brain has put up for my own protection. I’ve started to take notice of my surroundings, and don’t drool quite as much when they feed me. Those hazy days are swimming back into focus, like goldfish that on closer inspection seem to be the monster love child of a shark and a piranha. The memories are flooding back – and my mind is putting them into mental packing crates and sending them to deepest darkest mental Peru with Paddington Bear.

It started off innocently enough. I think that I said something about needing a new dress for my friend’s wedding. Not that close a friend, obviously, or I would have been already sorted for a dress – something pink and frilly hanging in my closet would have been giving me nightmares for at least a month. No, I needed a dress, and I though the answer was simple. Go shopping. That was the beginning of the end.

I arrived in Oxford Circus with the other 10,000 tourists and shoppers and pushed, pulled and clawed my way to one of many exits. I skirted the conmen selling fake watches, T-shirts and perfume, and crossed against the lights, traffic hopping to the other side and the first shops, and then I began.

Now, you probably wouldn’t believe this, but shopping in London is actually quite shite. Oxford street is merely a small selection of shops copied and pasted a few times along a very long street. As you walk along the street you see a NEXT, a GAP, a C&A, a cheap nasty fashion shop, the body shop, a burger king, then the whole lot starts again. Throw in a few different jewellery shops, a couple of scottish tweed shops, and the Disney Store (they have reached plague proportions now, it’s quite worrying) and you have the whole lot. The same shops, the same queues and the same crappy clothing. And season the whole experience with four million foreigners walking the OPPOSITE direction to you, a few mounds of dogshit, and a handful of smelly tramps who have just shat in their trousers, and are now trying to shake the offending turd out of one leg, and you have your day of shopping all wrapped up.

I thought to myself, how difficult could this be? I need a nice, semi formal dress, for a nice semi formal price. So I first went to the big names, GAP, and NEXT. And they were all selling the same thing – cargo pants. If I wanted to go to a wedding adorned in silver silk cargo pants, then I was in heaven. A glutton of cargo pants. Trouble was, I DON’T WANT CARGO PANTS! Cargo pants are great, but you need more than them in your life! Sort of a woman cannot live on cargo pants alone type of deal.

I had a few cards up my sleeve, all was not lost yet. I headed for River Island and Jigsaw. They are known for more girly clothing. I was right, they certainly were girly, but the type of girly clothing! It was frightening to think that maybe, somewhere out there, there are women who can wear this rubbish. Now, let me get this straight, I am not a waif. But that does not mean that I am fat. But even so, there is no way that I was going to wear a piece of clothing that is in reality no more than a rubber sheet wrapped around my arse. In fact, who in their right mind would?

The problem is, that obviously, many women do. I mean, someone has to buy this stuff. And I am sick of seeing clothing made to fit stick figures. One size fits all – as far as it stretches anyway. Talk about making one’s arse look like a water balloon.

OK, so obviously, I was not having much luck on the high street stores. So I decided to visit the department stores. In Australia that would have been a good idea. Not so in the UK. Nuh uh. I wandered around Selfridges for about an hour, lost in a world of confusion and intrigue. I kept seeing dresses that I liked, checking the price tags, and having angina. There was nothing there there that was not a famous brand name. After about half an hour of this, I thought that I should do a a little reality check to ground myself, so after several dresses with tags of £800, I looked at a knit sweater with a zip front. £50 max, right? The hanging tag said £250. My breath fled so quickly, I gasped like a goldfish for at least 2 minutes. There was no way I could afford to shop here!

I tried to leave the store, but the doors were built in such a way as to leave you disorientated and confused. (oh, quick joke, if you spin an oriental man around for about 2 minutes, does he become disorientated?) I ended up in ladies shoes, then stationary, then men’s ties. HELP!!@!!!@!@£!@ I finally made my way to the exit.

I wandered around, confused, frightened, my brain had begun its decent into a jelly like state, and after three hours I was still no closer to finding a dress to wear at the wedding. Then I saw it – a shop aimed at the older woman! I tiptoed in, terrified of what I might find, but unable to drag myself away. Would all the dresses have built in incontinence pants? Was it THAT kind of shop? I was pleasantly surprised, classy looking dresses hung quietly on their hangers. There was even a dress or two with sparkling straps and ritzy linings, high splits and low cleavages. All was looking good – then I ventured into the changing room.

I am sure that my scream could be heard from Oxford Circus to Slough. It just was not fair. Even aiming at mature women, the dresses were still made for people with no hips, no arses. The dress I tried on, in absolutely no stretch material was stuck to my hips so tightly i thought surgery was going to be the only answer. The bust and shoulders hung happily, proclaiming to the world that, not only did I have a big ass, but I had no boobs either. I ran from the shop without so much as a backwards glance, I could barely see where I was going, as the pink elephants were taking up too much room. I just couldn’t take any more of this.

I had now used up all my wild cards, there was no where else that I could shop. I crawled onto the tube and made my way home. I think in the end I wore a sheet and a cardigan to the wedding. I don’t remember – it’s in the twilight zone.

Never let me try this again, I would rather eat my own teeth.