Home is where no heart is

I got to Liverpool Street this morning to find the circle/hammersmith/metropolitan line platform full.  So much so, that people were queuing up the stairs.  Giddy as I was at the idea of pushing my way onto the platform and eventually onto a train, I decided to bail and walk from Liverpool street station to work.  The slight chill in the air transformed my exertions into dragon’s breath; a delightful side effect of winter, always capable of reverting me to childhood games in the playground.  Except, here I am, walking towards the office; marching towards monotony.  The thoughts of a miscalculated trip to the shopping centre at the weekend are still in my mind.  The post-traumatic stress manifests itself in an unwillingness to step into even the relatively harmless Tesco Express on Moorgate.  I’m already late and so I race up and down aisles, trying to select from the minimal but well chosen goods on offer. 

Temple of Consumerism

It wasn’t just the rain which dampened our shopping yesterday.  And neither was it just the traffic.  It was the cumulative effect of the entire experience.  It was seeing women with empty eyes picking out clothes they neither need nor particularly want.  It was listening to mothers scream at the screeching babies who, for some reason, do not appear to consider being dragged around shops as a substitute for motherly affection and attention. It was seeing morbidly obese teenagers in constrictive, yet revealing, clothing clutching a hot dog in one hand while gripping a mobile phone in the other.  It was shop assistants whose idea of customer service is to shove us out of the way as we browse, leaving us in no doubt of what a nuisance they find us.  It was the cheap plastic items, packaged in environment killing materials, wrapped in gaudy Christmas colours. They proclaimed themselves ideal gifts for a commercial holiday for which it is better to spend time and money buying something (anything) that will never be used (rather, it will end up in a skip), than to actually spend time with the recipients.

 As we were walking back to the car, shoulders hunched, pulse racing – the fight or flight response in full swing – Alan painted a picture of how different life could be.  A small village in Italy, local shops in walking distance from our home. We stroll in the sunshine to the deli, greet Leo and enquire after his children.  He shows us the fresh bread/cheese/sausages and pulls out the bottle of Valpolicella he’d put to one side for Alan.  He suggests we nip over to Georgio at the fruttivendolo as he’s just had a delivery of fresh tomatoes.  We would return home with our purchases and enjoy a simple, yet wonderful, dinner in the evening sunshine.

 On a worldwide scale, our quality of life is theoretically excellent.  We are always fed, warmly clothed and our houses are dry.  Yet, we have taken our good fortune, our extensive resources, education, technology and finances and this is what we have achieved; temples of consumerism fed by a vicious downward spiral of materialism.  Community has been replaced by commercialism.  Thought is unnecessary in the face of greed. Treasures have become trash.  I buy, therefore I am. 

I return to the present, arm full of food for the week, I am queuing to pay.  There is a slight vibration in the air, present only when a large group of people are all late for work and impatient to complete their purchase on a lunch they won’t remember tomorrow. We shuffle closer to the tills, each in a world of our own.  I’m next up; I step up to the counter and place my choices on the side. I dig out my ‘bag for life’ and prepare it to receive my items.  I look up; allow myself a slight smile as I am greeted, take a step forward, reach up my hand and press ‘start’ on the self-service screen.  I pack my things away and leave the store without having spoken a word.

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