Why I hate shopping

Malaysia Airlines sadly did not manage to deliver both my bags to KL when they delivered me here. Any baggage delay for more than four hours gives me £300 to spend on clothes, etc as long as I use my Amex card to pay for them. If the bag’s delayed by more than 48 hours, I get another £300. Truthfully, I’d prefer just to have my bag and sod the free money.

To most people, this sudden budget would be a source of considerable joy. Not to me though; I dislike shopping in general and clothes shopping is something that I hate with a passion. I’m aware that many people just love shopping for the sake of it and indeed there is even such a thing as “window shopping”. To me, recreational shopping makes as much sense as recreational ironing. Recreational window shopping makes as much sense as looking at a pile of clothes awaiting ironing. I routinely split my luggage between two small suitcases, so the non-arrival of case 2 isn’t so much of a disaster, but it did leave me without a pair of jeans and no T-shirts. So out shopping I was forced to go. (Why does that sound like Yoda?)

I am faintly fearful of crowds and especially milling crowds where people keep bumping into me. It’s a public holiday in KL and so all of Malaysia was out shopping, as I don’t think that there’s anything else to do here. KL’s like one of those American or Arabian Gulf cities that’s grown so fast that it’s little more than a collection of tall buildings with no identifiable city centre or obvious purpose for existing at all. Its entire purpose appears to be retail, which makes it heaven for many people; but which makes it a vacuous nowhere in my mind. Here are some other reasons why shopping is a fun-free zone:

I can’t bear how parents don’t seem to realise that their kids are not as cute as they think. In one shop, a young girl had locked herself into the only changing cubicle and was screaming and refusing to come out. Her Irish mother seemed to think this hilarious. I am unable to see anything cute or even mildly funny in this brattishness whatever.

It forces me to look my own body image and self-esteem issues in the face (or more precisely the waist). I can live without that, thanks; especially after a week in Africa where the only food that was reasonably certain not to give you food poisoning was chips.

I utterly hate being pestered (or mithered as we’d say in Manchester). If a shop assistant approaches me with unsolicited wittering more than twice, I walk out of the shop. There are no exceptions to this. They could be giving stuff away free but I wouldn’t care; just get out of my face.

To avoid the above, I have developed a routine where I walk so quickly round each shop that they don’t get the chance to follow me. I then work out which shops appear to be worth enduring the endless wittering from staff, although I make it politely but perfectly clear that I don’t “need help”. Looking at clothes is, after all, a perfectly straightforward exercise. I imagine I’d need help with calculus but I don’t need help to flick through a rack of T-shirts, thanks. I suppose what they expect is some pointless chat about what’s “nice”, but life’s too short to fill it with that sort of crap.

Department stores offer less respite from all this than one might expect, as more and more seem to be reconfigured into the American style of department store, which seem to be organised by designer. I truly couldn’t care if clothes are made my Gucci, Guess or George at ASDA as long as they look OK. They’re all made using child peasant labour in Indonesia anyway. It just drags the process out to have to look at each designer’s shirts (along with the other 95% of their stuff that I haven’t the slightest passing interest in). What a waste of time.

I find it irritating that shopping malls often stagger the escalators in random places to force you to walk around and see other shops that you had no desire to walk past. I can see the logic in this but if I’ve gone out for a couple of T-shirts, I’m deeply unlikely to buy anything else; especially if my egress has been blocked by a milling crowd moving at about 0.1 mph.

Eventually, after coming to hate the entire experience (humidity and jet lag did not help either), I saw a branch of Quicksilver. To my considerable joy, the staff said hi and invited me to shout them if I wanted anything but then just left me alone. What a relief the soft sell was after being followed by assistants in numerous small shops, Guess and Timberland. About £130 later, I left very pleased with having found the place. They even had the courtesy to provide a pair of jeans that fit with a 34” waist. 34 inches, my arse! Well, my arse is 36 inches to be more precise.

I hope my case turns up though. It’s got my favourite casual clothes in and the idea of replacing them is horrid as it would involve numerous trips to numerous shops. Yuk.