Diary of an up and coming sociopath

The called me mad, the peripheral social voices who expel conventional wisdom in a hypothetical sense. “Going christmas shopping the final weekend before christmas,” I considered they might say, “you’re going to get eaten alive.” I even almost believed it. However, once we got outisde of the tube station is was becoming quite obvious that if ever the final saturday before christmas, in central london, was busy, these day’s the public consciousness has convinced itself that it’s so useless going, that no-one actually goes. It wasn’t much busier than any other time I’ve been. We strolled about ith ample space and time and choice of products. I even discovered, thanks to Nikki’s sharp observation skills, Comic Showcase, which IU may begin considering my new local comic shop (replacing Oxford’s comic showcase, amusingly* enough.) Another thing worthy of note is that I finally procured myself a Mint Matchmaker McFlurry (god damn, they’re hard to order when your face is numb..) It was as excellent as I had dreamt. Should they go away I might have to start buying matchmakers and inserting them into McFlurry’s, that’s the level of excellence they had.

It wasn’t until the end of the day, when we decided to go to Hamley’s, that the problems began. We were unable to get into the building at first, a crowd was gathering around the entrance while a guy with a loudspeaker issued orders and instructions to people. (”Stand behind the flaming bins, you will all have a chance to be gouged,” etc) When we were all allowed into the building, we were instructed that the best way to reach any floor was to use the “Harry Potter Staircase” which on closer inspection turned out to be a poorly decorated service staircase/fire exit which presumably, is designed to take some of the heat off the cramped elevators. After around an hour of wandering and getting stood on we decided to bail out and headed home on the increasingly packed streets. What the shopping expedition really taught us was “don’t go christmas shopping after about 4pm on saturdays, in london” and I suspect that rule applies to most places.

Earlier that morning, we’d been to Tescos. They were having some kind of fancy dress day which in addition to providing some hilarious bad and disturbing costumes (I never expected to see and demon slut version of snow white dragging around a cage of potatoes…) also filled me with Christmas Cheer. Mainly, it was the incredibly depressed checkout clerk who looked on the verge of tears, wearing a santa hat, which reminded me what Christmas is all about. Hypocrisy.

* Not actually amusing unless you’re me.