| Xmas Shop Hell |
| Pix's Column | |||
| Monday, 07 December 2009 19:59 | |||
City centre shopping on a December weekend fills Pixelsmith with dread.I WENT shopping in Leeds on Sunday. It’s my super secret tactic for avoiding the Christmas crowds, although the number of people out and about suggested that somebody in my organisation has been leaking confidential plans to the public. Everything seems fine until you get to this big main bit called Headrow, which is so teeming at this time of year that it makes you feel like an ant. Still, I got in, bought some stuff and got out again. No lasting harm done. Sunday shopping is a habit borne of bitter experience. If you’ve ever found yourself trapped in Leeds on a festive Saturday, you’ll know what I mean. It’s a few years since I wound up in that situation and the emotional scars are so hard etched into my soul that, to this day, I still sometimes wake up screaming in the middle of the night, hands clutched tight around invisible shopping bags and a look of stricken fear carved across my face. "That’s what Christmas is for these people. Getting in my way and impeding my gift buying. They’re the direct opposite of Santa" Conservative estimates suggest that around 20 per cent of the population of the world heads into the city centre on December Saturdays. At least half of them don’t actually buy anything. Some just mill around on the pavement looking flustered and getting in your way, while the worst of them mill around inside shops, standing zombified in front of shelves you need to access, waddling sloth-like up stairs you planned to climb or clogging up till queues like short fleshy pylons with hair on the top. I’m sure that when they get to the counter they just walk right back round to the end of the line again. That’s what Christmas is for these people. Getting in my way and impeding my gift buying. They’re the direct opposite of Santa. I have no idea where they all come from, because I’m sure there aren’t that many people in Leeds. My thinking is that they flock from other parts of the country in an attempt to undermine Yorkshire by making its consumers exceptionally tired and annoyed. There’s one little beacon of relief in the midst of this circle of retail hell, and that’s the German Christmas market in Millennium Square. I’ve been a devotee of this place from the start, drawn in by its glowing sheds filled with fried potatoes, pretzels and candied nuts. It’s gone slightly downhill since then, with too many people hawking crafts instead of things you can eat. I can get bangles and wooden trains elsewhere, thank you very much. It’s like turning up to a farmers’ market and finding that everyone’s selling soap. Also, oddly, most of the stallholders seem to be from east Asia. I’d love it if a Chinese/Japanese/Korean Christmas market came to Leeds - although it would probably necessitate a change of religion for the sellers - but when you’re billing something as German, I demand that you provide me with Germans. My long departed GCSE German skills are now so miniscule that they can only be exercised in a shopping scenario, where you can get across everything you need to say by pointing, handing over a tenner and adding “danke schön” at the end so it feels like you’ve made an effort. Anyway, short of turning the whole city centre into a German Christmas market, I have a suggestion which I’m planning to submit to the council to reduce the utter hideousness of going shopping during a festive weekend. I’m going to propose a big flashing sign featuring the words “All the free mince pies you can eat” spelled out in red and white bulbs. Behind it will the kind of tent they use to cover manholes, and inside that tent will be an actual manhole. As soon as somebody walks in - and I’m hoping there will be a long queue - a pair of Santa’s elves will leap out from a corner and shove them down the manhole. The victims will land on some pillows (I don’t want them hurt, just out of the way) and find themselves in a sewer, where there will be enough bedding and tinned food to last until the middle of January (after the sales) at which point they will all be released back to their homes. I think this scheme could catch on it other cities across the UK. Not that they need it. They all shop in Leeds.
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DerBart makes this comment
Tue 08 Dec 2009 07:44:19 CST