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.