"Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money." ~Author Unknown
I had planned to blog about my birthday as it was a BIG birthday. However my birthday falls in December. Now this is great because it is a festive time of year people are in a party mood and it is a natural time to celebrate. So Yes! My birthday was awesome. Actually seeing that word written down looks pretty poor. Let’s try it again. AweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeSOME! Yep that comes somewhat closer.
I had lunch with my favourite man. (Hot... naughty.. so not what I should be doing with my time), the La perla sale (85% off some of the best underwear a girl could ever dream off), shopping in New Bond Street (Yep thank you Fenwicks for not selling out like Harvey Nicks and Selfridges and remaining bloody amazing.) Followed up with supper with my parents (if you have slightly bonkers ever young parents you will know what I mean). And the gathering of the friends is to come tonight. YES... I can highly recommend having a December birthday.
But no ... you will not be getting a blog about my birthday at all. Well you will a bit as what I’m going to blog about did happen on my birthday... But it is about something that managed to really wind me up. (Which face facts is what the JaxWorld blog is all about.. so no whinging from you! LOL).
Now I get it.
London is the most awesome town on the planet. It has the architecture (if you haven’t noticed... look UP.) It has the best theatre. It has unbelievable hotels. It has a fabulous river front. It is drowned in history (had lunch a few months back with my supermodel Russian friend Marina and we found an authentic roman bath just of The Strand). It has the clubs, the bars, the restaurants and on top of this all it has more green space than any urban area on earth. I get it why people flock to London no matter the season.
But you know what ruffles my feathers?
The annual influx of international Christmas Shoppers.
Oh go home and shop in your own towns.... PLEEEEEEEAAASE??
Now I don’t mind that people flood to my city to enjoy the most fantastic retail experience on earth. I really don’t. In fact on behalf of Boris (or of the charts nutso major) I thank you or your dollar, yen, euro and shekel. BUT. Please if you are here to shop... learn the ruddy rules will ya!
In England... we have rules. Now unlike most counties we don’t have rules to keep you down or ruin your life... we have rules so that we can spare each other from the English mans worst nightmare..... Embarrassment!
We here on this lower eastern portion of this sceptred isle (oh for my non Brit readers... the lower west is another country called Wales and the upper portion is another country called Scotland... after centuries of brutality from us they kind of want independence but we won’t let them have it as the west have gold and up north there is oil)... we have a massive fear of embarrassment. (The Scots tried to capitalise on this by having their blokes wear skirts and no panties and the Welsh tried this by getting unbelievably intimate with sheep... but it didn’t work.) No... cross dressing and animal abusing does not embarrass an Englishman... what does is having to point out to a Johnny foreigner that there IS actually a QUEUE.
Call us ridiculous if you like but the reason why (when I was born) most of the world map was pink was that we have a civilised approach to shopping. We taught the world to stand in line and wait your turn - and they liked it. They called it the 'English Sense of Fair Play': The person in front of you is there for one reason and ONE reason only. He got there before you.
These days of course the world map is no longer predomiantly pink and the world does rather mock our systems... only the other day an American friend pointed out to me that the English invented in class system purely to find a reason to look down on people who are exactly the same as each other! Laugh at us if you want on any of our odd customs, we have a sense of humour and we keep some purely for the irony but when it comes to queuing we are serious.
Queuing WORKS. It is the ultimate in meritocracy. He who comes first, gets served first. You snooze you lose. SIMPLES!
However, on Wednesday I discovered to my horror, hoards of persons with accents that were not generated in these parts, totally ignoring our system (honed over centuries of trial and error and resulting in the blueprint called the SINGLE QUEUE) and messing things up for the rest of us.
Understanding that they must wait in line for services rather than barging to the front is a concept that bewilders visitors to the UK. This is not their fault; we do understand that in less-wealthy countries the only way to get access to necessities is to push yourself forward. However let me tell you about what happened in Fenwicks on Wednesday.
I had just queued to purchase a darling object from a great designer. You know how it is when you have a budget but you have abandoned it- you need to purchase and purchase quickly... any time to think will result in you having to put it back and live within your means. Queuing is great system... each second involves you taking one step closer to the cash register...it’s a slow-mo road to commitment to purchase.
Well on Wednesday ... not so much.
Not one but two thickly accented persons cut in front of me to buy unspeakable amounts of Christmas wrapping paper. They jabbered away to each other in their incomprehensible tongue giving the store assistant little choice but to wrap, pack and ring up their items. The assistant waved an apologetic eyebrow at me (we English are far too embarrassed to mutter our displeasure at rule breakers). But queue jumpers dispatched...finally it was my turn.
I put my goods on the counter.
Lord alone know why I bothered as within seconds a loud American interrupted and put her goods in front of the assistant and started asking questions about her purchases as if she was being served now.
“Excuse me” I said apologetically
(There is a tendency in England to apologise for others wrong doings... even if someone treads on your head, it is our way to apologise for your skull being in their way rather than to wait for them to apologise for causing your bonce an injury)
“Excuse me,” I repeated “I think you’ll find I was first... I think she’s serving me”
(Another peculiar thing is that we never state our circumstances as a fact... even if it is self evident that the other person is way out of line we absolutely never tell them that we find the facts to be self evident, we always say ‘I think’ as if there is a possibility that we may have misunderstood what to an idiot is clearly a breach of decorum).
The American looked rather bewildered for a nano-second, processed what I said and then pronounced that the USA had a superior service culture and no way would she be served after me back home.
“That’s as maybe” I said “But I have allowed 2 others to cut in as it was clear that English was not their first language as they may have been unable to understand the signs, but clearly you speak English fluently, so I assume you can also read it... the sign says queue starts here and I am first in the queue – this is how we do things in England... we politely queue and wait our turn”.
(Yes... we English are crap at the four second put down.... we prefer the well constructed diatribe as a method to put interlopers back in their boxes)
“Oh Em Gee!” exclaimed our visitor from over the sea “back home we don’t have this stand in line nonsense.... we get served!”
“I think you’ll find madam... back home if you ‘cut in line’ you’d be shot” I retorted.
The American recoiled and joined the queue.
Feathers ruffled by this interchange... (yes I won, but being a Brit mean that then you feel awful about it)... I had to get to a happy place. Now for me one of those happy places has to be the retail emporium Heals, on the Tottenham Court Road (TCR). Heals is the doyen for furniture stores... each floor is a film set for the life you wish you had. It’s a wonderful thing to lie on a chaise lounge in Heals and pretend your servant will be back to you in a jiffy with a cup of tea in a bone china cup.
So on leaving Fenwicks, I trotted up to TCR. Walking in London is one of the true joys in life. At this time of year, the city is decked out for yuletide. Retailers and local councils vie with each other for who can use the most light bulbs and lasers to make the best of the early darkness. By 4pm natural light is history and the city twinkles in shades of blue, pink, silver, gold, red and green. It is quite something.
The obvious lights to see are Oxford Street and Regent Street where humungous lighting rigs festoon the entire length of the boulevards. However, the smaller retail streets such as South Molton Street, St Christopher’s Walk and Carnaby Street are sights to behold decked out in extraordinary flamboyancy. Walking from Bond Street to TCR means you can take these in while absorbing the smells from street vendors roasting chestnuts, and hearing carols played on the brass instruments of the Salvation Army. If that doesn’t infuse one with the sprit of the season... then nothing will.
Except.
Walking during the winter influx of global shoppers is a trial of epic proportions. Just like our international shoppers who do not know that there is a perfectly good system in place for service... our international visitors can’t grasp the idea that stopping suddenly with no warning on the narrow streets of London is dangerous!
I get it... every few feet there is a sight to behold... we are an ingenious nation when it comes to expressing ourselves artistically. I do understand that our international visitors wish to capture as much of what they see on camera so they can show the folks back home. But what I don’t get is why, when walking in a throng of people they suddenly stop, rummage in their bags for cameras then start zig zaging about snapping away. They seem oblivious to the fact that stopping suddenly causes everyone behind you to collide with each other!
We’re BRITISH. We’re quite happy NOT to have physical contact with each other! I cannot explain how traumatic it is for us to have to peel ourselves of the person in front – or how excruciatingly embarrassing it is to apologise to someone –without any eye contact of course- for being almost erotically intimate with them when that was certainly NOT your intent!
On that short walk from Fenwicks of Bond Street to Heals of TCR... I must have been intimate with the backs of at least thirty people. And the culprit each time... a visitor with a camera.
What makes things worse is that, because they have been shopping, they have half a dozen bags. When the camera muse strikes them... they simply plonk their bags down on the pavement and start snap-snapping away. Which means (as an on-coming pedestrian) I find myself tangled in the bag handles... or worse standing on their present for Aunty Flo.
But hey ho!
You know what I love about London?... all you have to do is turn a corner and tranquillity returns.
I did just that on Wednesday evening.
Having been twice queue-jumped then had disagreeable words with the thrice attempt, peeled myself of the backs of people and tripped over a slew of pavement bags. I hung a left into Columbia road.
Suddenly the hustle and bustle melted away into a charming neighbourhood of cobbled streets and enclave of traders offers vintage fashions, quirky artworks, funky homewares and irresistible deli goods. Usually Columbia Road is only open on Sundays when the flower market is on but on the Chrimbo run up they open late on Wednesday and the 40 or so retailers also offer refreshments, music, and entertainment while you shop.
And you know what.... after a gingerbread latte under a Victorian street lamp... the bah and the humbug melted out of me. A lovely American tourist and I struck up a conversation about which movies Columbia Road had featured in as a film set and I even offered to take a couple of snaps for a group of giddy French girls who were over for a spot of Christmas shopping:
“Ziss is soh coowl... we don’t ave ziss in Pari” one of them drooled.
And you know what... they don’t.
Sometimes it takes international Christmas shoppers to help grumpy residents of ol’ London town like me stock up on some seasonal cheer!
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