Shopping

I was lying about in bed the other morning, having just woken up. The strong sunlight behind the curtain and traffic noise suggested it was about my usual waking up time. 11am. It was a Saturday morning.

Saturday mornings are special. Saturday mornings are just as different from weekday mornings for someone unemployed like me as they are for someone working like you. That is, aside from the certainty of having a hangover, I actually have things to look forward to. Saturday is the most active day of the week for me.

The phone rang an hour or so later while I was still loafing around in bed. It was Jon. He said he was going up Great Lakes and asked if I wanted to go.

I said of course I did.

-

Great Lakes is a new out-of-town shopping centre just off the motorway. It's big, classy and makes all other shopping centres look rubbish.

There was nothing I really needed but that's not the point.

Jon came round in his car an hour or so later an gave me a couple of toots. I left the house and there he was behind the wheel waiting and smoking a joint. Jon's car is is an old white hatchback. Seriously old. It feels all empty inside. It has an old-style car-stereo which hangs below the dashboard and has its wires draping on the floor. It stinks of smoke, both stale and fresh.

'my sister's coming' he said as I got in, 'gonna pick her up.'

Jon's sister is older than us. She is, quite frankly, a stunner. We like to remind Jon of this as often as possible. She used to have this boyfriend who always had something funny or interesting to say. Steve. I guess we looked up to him. He came to the pub with us a few times and bought us all drinks. He worked in plastic piping or something, but clearly did well for himself. He always wore flash shirts and left the keys to his Audi sitting on the table in front of him. They split up a while ago, we never found out why and haven't seen him since.

Jon's sister has a pretty good job as well and lives in one of the brand new flats on the old marshland.

-

We parked up and as we got out I saw her leaning over the balcony of her second floor flat.

Her hair was tied back and she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt with silver writing on the front. She looked amazing.

'come up' she called down and went inside again.

I'd never been to her place before and the first thing I noticed as I got to the front door was that the whole place smelt great. Not perfumed exactly, but just clean. Very clean. There was a thick white carpet in the hallway and Jon told me to take my shoes off.

We walked into the living room and she said hello and told us to take a seat because she'd be a few minutes. She picked up her handbag and walked around the room finding things to put in it, and then disappeared into a bedroom.

Jon was already quite stoned and didn't say much so we just sat there and I looked around the room. It was pretty stylish. The walls were red and there were futuristic metal lights hanging from the ceiling. There was a big picture on the back wall with lots of coloured shapes on it. The shapes weren't perfect or symmetrical but rough and jumbled looking. There were lots of different bits to look at and you could follow the lines around with your eyes. Mostly it just looked cool I suppose.

When Jon's sister came back in I asked her about the picture and she looked over to it without much interest.

'Got it in Ikea' she said and sat down to put her shoes on.

'Nice' I said and nodded.

I started thinking that I should have something like that in my place.

'Let's take my car' she said and stood up.

-

I sat on the soft back seat of her car and watched the road fly past. Everything in her car seemed plump and it had an even stronger clean smell than her apartment. We coasted up the motorway for a while and then turned off on a slip-road that ran through a wooded area. When we came out on the other side the road ran downhill and we could see the shopping centre in front of us.

Great Lakes is enormous. It has four tall turrets all capped with huge flags. As we came down towards it I could see the flags flapping in the wind and the whole thing seemed to shine in the sunlight.

Great Lakes is a good name in a way because the shopping centre itself is totally surrounded but huge flat car parks, and this being Saturday afternoon you could say it was high tide. There were queues of cars coming in from all directions. We whizzed around a couple of roundabouts and joined one of the queues.

Jon didn't say a lot. His sister started running off a list of things she was going to buy.

'I'm going to get some art' I said when she'd finished.

'what?' said Jon, looking back.

I repeated myself and he turned back around and shrugged his shoulders.


-


Once inside we agreed to split up and meet back an hour later. Jon's sister went off into the very first clothes shop just beside us. Jon said that the video game shop was further up to the right so we started off along the lane of shops, all jam packed with people. Our shoes squeaked as we walked along on the marble floor but the noise of all the other people was distant somehow. The ceiling of Great Lakes is way up high and made of huge sheets of glass. There were lines of bunting hanging criss-crossed in the space beneath it. All the little flags had shop logos on them.

As we were walking I decided that my budget would probably only stretch to a poster, but I should be able to find something arty somewhere.

The first place I saw that I thought might have some posters was called Mind/Spirit. It had quite a few ornaments and things in the window. I told Jon I was going to have a look and he just carried on walking.

'see you in there' I heard him say as he was walking off.

I walked in and saw a poster rack towards the back. It was pretty calm in there and the woman behind the counter said hello. I flipped through the posters in the rack, each one making a satisfying clack sound as I did so. First of all there were some pictures of mountains and rivers, things like that, with some symbols around them. There was one with lots of Chinese writing on it and another with a Buddha and the word Chakra on it. All pretty shit really. As I was walking out I looked at the shelves and noticed a little block of crystallised rock with a candle stuck in it. The sign next to it said 'Meditation candle, £39.99'. I left without saying goodbye and carried on through the shopping centre.

A little further along I went into a big music store to have a look. They had a lot of posters on the second floor at the back. They had some pretty cool posters actually. Films and TV shows, things like that. They weren't what I was looking for though. I wanted sophistication.

I left and carried on walking through the crowds. I noticed the computer game shop and looked in to see if if Jon was there. I spotted him straight away, standing in the middle of a crowd of kids watching awestruck as someone demonstrated a new console on a big screen. He didn't notice me so I went back out and continued.

A little further on I found a specialist picture shop. It was brilliant. There were pictures all over the walls. I looked through their posters and they had some copies of famous paintings that I recognised, and some stylish black and white photos. I wanted something a bit more original though so I carried on flicking through until I came to some modern art. I found one a bit like the one I'd see at Jon's sister's place. It had loads of coloured shapes and squiggly lines on it. I imagined how stylish it would look hanging above the TV in my living room. Perfect.

-

I got back to our meeting point and waited, watching all the shoppers. There's nothing like the buzz of a shopping centre on Saturday afternoon. After a while I saw Jon's sister coming back down the lane. She was carrying three large bags and was zig-zagging back and forth to look in other shop windows. Jon turned up just after, carrying a small bag of computer games. We all felt very pleased with ourselves and headed off to the food court for lunch.

-

When I got back home I found some blutack, put a fat blob on each corner and stuck it up above the TV. I stood back to admire it and then sat back on the sofa to get the feel from there. Very cool.

I occasionally glanced up at it that evening while watching TV. Good work.

Work

Doug gave me a call and told me to meet him in the Red Lion for a beer at half six. He knew this probably meant buying me one, but then Doug has quite a good job. He's never really explained what he does exactly. I think talking about it would bore him just as much as it would me. It's up in the city centre anyway.

The Red Lion is on a corner by the entrance to the station. Every quarter of an hour in the evening a train arrives from the city centre and a big gang of commuters file out of the station and rush past it.

I waited outside. A train came in and Doug came striding out of the station at the head of the crowd. He gave me a wave. He was wearing a suit and he had the evening newspaper in his hand.

'hello mate' he said and shook my hand. The crowd followed behind him and a girl with a classic secretary look passed us. Doug watched her pass, puckered his face up and looked at me while taking a short intake of breath. Then he clapped me on the arm.

'come on then' he said 'I'm thirsty' and darted off into the pub.

We went and stood at the bar, Doug slapped his newspaper down on it, got his wallet out and ordered two pints. When we got them he took a long sip from his beer, said 'ahh yeah', then took another one.

'So what've you been up to today?' he said

In reality I'd only been up since about 1pm and had been in my dressing gown until about half an hour before, but I didn't feel like telling Doug that so I just said 'the usual' and took a swig of my beer.

'That means sitting around doing fuck all' he said loudly.

I was mid-swig as he said this, so he just carried on.

'mate, you've gotta sort it out' he said 'have you even looked this week?'

Doug often went off on a parental nag, which, true to form, was justified but pissed me off all the same. I told him that I'd been looking on the internet, which I hadn't, and that there was nothing.

'Go to an agency' He said 'just put your suit on, go up town and register. They'll find you something right away. It's in their interest to help you. That's how it works.'

'Yeah ok' I said.

Doug looked at me and shook his head.

'You lazy fuck' he said.

Doug carried on talking for a while. He told me some reasonably amusing anecdotes about some of his colleagues and about a girl he fancies who works on the floor below.
I noticed that Doug had a lot to say, and I didn't. You would never describe Doug as dynamic, but I must admit he had more life in him than I did. I suppose even a boring job puts a bit of life into you. Strange. So I decided to go to an agency the next day.

-

It took me a few days to get organised. Things move slowly for the unemployed. I found out there was an employment agency in the high street so I didn't even have to bother going up town. I went in with a CV and had a chat with a very friendly, and quite attractive woman who could handle small talk like a hairdresser. She told me they'd be in touch and I came out 30 minutes later feeling very productive. I stopped off at the off licence to buy some beer and then went home.

I sat on the sofa and cracked open a beer, feeling very good about myself. After watching TV for an hour or so the phone rang. I picked up and it was the woman. She told me that there was a day's work in a goods yard starting at 8.30am the next morning.

This was a bit of a shock to be honest, but she was pretty persuasive so I agreed and she gave me the details.

-

It was still dark when I got up but I didn't feel too bad.

The goods yard is basically a big warehouse near the motorway where the trucks stop,load and unload. I took a bus. It's not really that far. There's an industrial area down the road, near where the sinking shopping mall was. I walked right in through the gate and found the office over at the side of the yard. The boss was sitting behind a metal desk and he got up and shook my hand. He told me that I was to help with an early delivery but he was going to be out of the office all day. He said the boys would show me what to do and pointed me over to two guys standing out in the yard.

I walked towards them and noticed them grinning at me.

'Hello here's our bitch for the day' one of them said. 'you gonna make us a cup of tea then?'

'two sugars' the other one said.

I could tell they were joking but I didn't really know what to say. The first one that spoke was muscular but fat, and had long hair in a pony tail. The other one was younger, lanky and cocky looking. They both wore navy blue polo shirts with GL Depot written on them.

'only joking, what's your name mate?' said Ponytail and held out his hand. I noticed he was wearing quite a few rings. I introduced myself and he told me that we had to wait for the trucks to arrive and I might as well have a cigarette or something.

The boss left and after a while some trucks came in. Ponytail told me to take the boxes off the back and load them onto a space on the floor that was marked out with blue lines. We did this for about an hour but then it turned out that the delivery wasn't as big as expected so by 10am we'd finished.

The lanky one, who told me his name was Mike, said there would be another delivery after lunch but until then we could just sit about because the boss wasn't there. Ponytail said I could make some tea, which I did, and then we all sat around smoking at a table covered in old newspapers.

Mike turned out to be quite chatty. He told me that he found his job boring but he couldn't get much else because he'd been in prison. He even laughed a bit when he told me that. He said it was just for a few months.

'When I first started the boss thought I was gonna steal everything' he said as if it were common sense. 'but he's alright'

'I'll tell him you did a good job this morning' he added.

I quite liked Mike. He said warehousing was better than building work because it was easier.

'you ever worked on a building site?' he asked, I shook my head, 'fuck me'

After a while he suggested a game of darts. He got up and went to find them and then called us into the warehouse. The dart board was on the far wall and seeing as the warehouse was massive, the boys thought it was more fun to fling the darts from halfway across the depot. Ponytail was first and he took a run up before flinging the dart overhead like a throwing knife. It made a big arc under the depot ceiling before lodging itself into the side of a wooden crate. Mike had a go and his bounced on the floor and slapped into the back wall. We carried on like this for a while but then got bored so Ponytail told me to knock up some more tea.

We smoked a bit more and Ponytail went off to the toilet. Mike said that Ponytail had a stash of porn hidden in a hole in the toilet ceiling and laughed.

'I'll show you later' he said and took a gulp of tea.

When Ponytail came back he said that we might as well go to lunch and that he was going up the pub.

'There's fuck all else around here' he said to me 'so you might as well come.'

-

The King's Arms is a rough looking place on the edge of the industrial estate. The front is nearly black from decades of traffic fumes and behind it is all wasteland. We went in, ordered some sandwiches and beer, then found a table near the back. Ponytail went straight over to the fruit machine and stayed there until his sandwich came, ate it, then went back again. Mike and me just sat around reading some old newspapers. After a while we decided to get a second pint in.

-

Back at the depot we waited around for the afternoon delivery. I went and made some tea and Mike said he knew where the boss kept a stash of chocolate biscuits and went off to his office to get some. Once we'd finished off the biscuits, smoked some more and I'd made another round of tea, a phone started ringing in the warehouse. Ponytail jumped up and went over to the far wall near the dart board. When he came back he said that the afternoon delivery had been cancelled and the boss said I could go home.

'Lucky boy' he said picking up his tea and blowing on it.

'We don't need you tomorrow' he said' but the boss said he'll let you know when we have another big delivery.'

So there it was. I'd finished early and I had a whole day off the next day. I waved goodbye to the boys and walked off back to the bus stop. It was just after 3pm.

It was only Tuesday but it had that Friday night feeling as I sat on the bus going back home. I gave Doug a call to see if he wanted to meet up for a beer later, on me naturally.

Holiday

One of the nice things about being unemployed is that I can take my time waking up in the morning. It's always full daylight outside when I first wake up. Then I usually drift off again, wake up again, drift off, and so on. Each time I'm a little more conscious. One step at a time.
It's not like that when you have a job.

This morning I was lying there half-asleep and I was thinking about a holiday I went on once. Not sure why, it just came that way.

So anyway it was in Tenerife with my mum. We stayed in this huge white hotel complex. Our apartment was really high up and there was a balcony. Every morning we sat out on the plastic table and chairs and ate breakfast. It had a great view. When I looked over the edge I could see the pool and all the people around it. We could see the sea in the distance as well, just behind a couple of other hotels. Not far. There were loads of other balconies either side of us and you could see all the other people sitting around half-naked enjoying thier breakfast. What a place.

It made me feel like a change of scenery so I got up, got dressed, ate some toast and left the house, all before noon.

I decided to go a different high street in the suburb next to mine.

When you drive through unfamiliar suburbs, you can't really tell where one stops and the other begins, but that's not true when you live in them. Each one has it's own character. Even the people seem different. Take a bus ride for example, from start to finish, and you could end up in a place that feels totally foreign.

I walked up to the bus stop but then decided to walk all the way. It wouldn't take too long and they do say that the journey is the best bit. I carried on along the main road for a while and then cut across the wasteland leading up to the road that runs through the old metal train bridge.

The train bridge is the division between my suburb and the next one. It works quite well like that actually because it doesn't feel like one place or the other. When you walk through it, it gets darker, colder and the cars get louder. It even has it's own smell. Pigeon shit.

When I came out the other side the sun was shining and I felt pretty cheerful as I walked up the hill towards the high street. The houses all look pretty much the same here I must admit, and the cars outside them too. It still felt different though.

I noticed a petrol station on the other side of the road. It was red and had a big flat roof. I decided to get an ice cream.

I picked out an ice cream from a big freezer on the floor. On the wall next to it there were some maps and guide books. Once outside I unwrapped my ice-cream and looked out onto the forecourt. There weren't any cars and it seemed really empty and open. I decided to cut right across through the pumps, choosing any path I liked. It was great. Just like walking in the middle of the road. I walked slowly over to the air dispenser and circled it, still licking my ice-cream. Then I ambled across the parking spaces at the side of the forecourt and then back onto the pavement on the other side.

There were more shops now as I reached the High Street. I passed a newsagent which had all the newspapers slotted into a rack outside the door. No postcards though.

I remembered that there was a cafe just further along and felt a thirst.

When we were in Tenerife we walked into the town near the beach every night. There were bars and restaurants everywhere and the streets were full of people, and music, and tables with white tablecloths and candles in wine bottles. It was great. My mum let me chose the restaurant so we often went back to the same one where they did great hamburgers.

That's a holiday isn't it. Sitting outside in a t-shirt at night. Eating and drinking outside.

I walked into the cafe and got a tea to go, in a polystyrene cup. They didn't have any tables outside but I noticed a free bench at the bus stop a bit further along. I went and sat down.

There was quite a bit of noise from the traffic but the sun was warming the side of my face and could watch all the shoppers go by on the high street.

I looked at the advertising panel attached to the bus stop. It showed a man in a business suit who had taken his shoes and socks off and was running along a beach next to the water. It was for an airline or something.

Then I noticed a woman shaking a tablecloth over the balcony of one of the flats above the shops. I wondered what it must be like to live there. I saw a young couple wandering along the pavement by the roadside. Having a good time I bet.

I think I stayed there for almost half an hour sipping that tea. it made quite a nice little break. Nothing to do but sit and watch. Very relaxing.

I took the bus home and was back in the house by 2pm. I spent the rest of the day on the sofa watching TV. Occasionally though I thought about my little adventure. Yes, a fine one indeed.