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Shopping and... not shopping
Aug. 17th, 2005 10:28 pmOn Sunday we walked up onto the moors from Blanchland, and turned right along a track which was not a right of way, but now led across access land: turf underfoot, the Derwent reservoir ahead and below, and all around us heather a shade brighter than it had been the week before. And Sue and I were talking about shopping.
She had prepared a picnic from the remains of Saturday's dinner party: there were cheese sandwiches made from good cheese and Sue's own bread, and there was a salad of four kinds of beetroot (red, white, red-and-white-striped and golden). She had shopped at the farmers' market in Barnard Castle and at the cheese stall in the Grainger Market where you can still buy fresh yeast. We agreed that this kind of shopping is more fun and more rewarding than supermarket shopping: "But it does take a lot longer," said Sue.
It does; but I have a theory about this. We have bought the idea that dashing round a supermarket once a week (or even less often) is a faster and more convenient and therefore better way to shop. Leave aside for the present what this means for the freshness of what we eat; I think that people have a certain amount of need-to-shop, and if you prevent them from expressing it by pottering down the High Street buying two apples here and a bag of soap flakes there, it will find expression somewhere else. The time we save at the supermarket is spent indulging in retail therapy. Why else do people spend their Sunday afternoons at B & Q? Even I - and I'm not a great shopper - not only buy books but enjoy the process of buying them.
Sue agreed that this might be so, but that the urge to shop may have peaked: retailers are reporting reduced spending. And it wasn't until the following morning that a news item made me wonder whether we are genuinely spending less, or whether we have simply transferred our affections to eBay?
She had prepared a picnic from the remains of Saturday's dinner party: there were cheese sandwiches made from good cheese and Sue's own bread, and there was a salad of four kinds of beetroot (red, white, red-and-white-striped and golden). She had shopped at the farmers' market in Barnard Castle and at the cheese stall in the Grainger Market where you can still buy fresh yeast. We agreed that this kind of shopping is more fun and more rewarding than supermarket shopping: "But it does take a lot longer," said Sue.
It does; but I have a theory about this. We have bought the idea that dashing round a supermarket once a week (or even less often) is a faster and more convenient and therefore better way to shop. Leave aside for the present what this means for the freshness of what we eat; I think that people have a certain amount of need-to-shop, and if you prevent them from expressing it by pottering down the High Street buying two apples here and a bag of soap flakes there, it will find expression somewhere else. The time we save at the supermarket is spent indulging in retail therapy. Why else do people spend their Sunday afternoons at B & Q? Even I - and I'm not a great shopper - not only buy books but enjoy the process of buying them.
Sue agreed that this might be so, but that the urge to shop may have peaked: retailers are reporting reduced spending. And it wasn't until the following morning that a news item made me wonder whether we are genuinely spending less, or whether we have simply transferred our affections to eBay?
