On shopping for a tshirt

Yesterday started out great. I splashed around in dragonboats in the morning - having my first sweet taste of victory (well, we came second to be totally accurate but after being annihilated in the first round it certainly felt like a victory not to come so decisively Last). I ambled toward work with the wonderful knowledge that this would be the last day for a while I'd have to discuss Miller's, 'A View from the Bridge' alongside Dai Sijie's, 'Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamtress' - the GCSE English Literature exam is today, and it didn't come a moment too soon for my sanity.

Anyhow, from the moment I stepped on the ferry to leave Lamma, an island I suddenly felt a great surge of affection for, things went downhill. I wont bore you with the specifics, principally because I can't be bothered to type all the background information to explain why I was quite so angry with the world as I came home, but I do have a rant relevant to the majority of readers...

Shopping. I have the good fortune to be the least materialistic person on the planet (okay, second least, I think my brother warrants the number one spot there) and subsequently Shopping is me entering into a personal hell. When one tshirt falls apart I generally grumble for a while and then set about replacing it with another, and this was on yesterday's agenda. Shopping in Hong Kong adds a further dimension to the nightmare of finding a product: there is so damn much here. If you ask three people where they recommend going for a cheap pair of shoes, the first will suggest Mong Kok and the Ladies' Market up there; the second will dispute this heavily and send you off toward the markets at Stanley, while the third will sigh dramatically and tell you that they're both wrong and the markets in Central will have everything you need. If you make a mistake of asking a fourth, they'll have you across the border into China where prices are as low as they get anywhere in the world.

Although 'good bargain' wasn't necessarily on my mind, I meandered past H&M and saw a particularly acceptable tshirt on display in the window. Not being one for wandering around an entire city and comparing product upon product for days on end, I made a snap decision and entered into the vast store on Queen's Road. A good half hour of marching around that blasted edifice resulted in no tshirt sighting, and this is where I started becoming incensed. I swear some stores put products they don't even offer in their windows in order to lure unsuspecting shoppers in: by not having the product in store, they ensure the potential purchaser has to wander around their entire shop in search of it, the theory presumably being that hopefully they'll get distracted en route by the other 'fantastic' products on offer.

In a thoroughly foul mood, I trudged along to Marks n Sparks and went to the cashier with the product I wished to purchase (okay, we're all friends here, it was a bra. Another one having finally disintegrated recently). Having finally found where I was supposed to queue - and how I hate it when that place isn't immediately obvious - I approached the unsmiling cashier who grabbed said bra from me and practically snatched my credit card from my hand. While punching in God knows what numbers onto her till, she randomly asked me if I'd like to buy some biscuits today. In the first place, how is there any connection between bras and biscuits, and in the second place, if I have the intelligence to choose from their vast array of bras and actually manage to make some degree of selection presumably I have the brain cells required to decide whether or not I want biscuits that day. I hate it when stores do this - WHSmith in the UK is a particularly bad culprit - and try to push some utterly random product onto you at the last moment. Unlike the majority of the population, apparently, I am buying something not for the sake of buying and spending but because i need it. I hate the underlying assumption that I'm an idiot who can be manipulated into forking out for any old thing.

I also hate those 'meeters and greeters' in stores who ask me cheerily if they can help me. Part of me wants to yell at them that I severely doubt it, and the other part to say they just need to give me ten seconds to look around their store first then I'll let them know. They magically dissipate the moment you do want one of them, obviously. The worst country by far is America, where there isn't a smile in sight to go along with the words: yes, I want to be accompanied on my shopping mission by the most miserable soul in the city, please join and help me decide what kind of clothes I like. Furthermore, they insist on wishing me a Nice Day, while I'm sure deep inside they are cursing every ounce of my being for having roused them from their semi dormant state in order to serve me.

I love catalogue stores, I really do. I know what I want, I go and get a whopping great book and find the exact product, I do a quick search on a nifty little computer and it tells me whether or not the item is in stock, and five minutes later with the minimal amount of human interaction and annoyance the product is in my hand. If it could be guaranteed that size 10 meant size 10 (UK, please, UK) and that 34" trouser leg meant the same thing in every shop, I would do this for clothes as well. If they could have photos of people of all shapes and sizes wearing the specific item and I could see that ah ha, on a 6ft soul the tshirt reveals a good two thirds of their midriff, it would save me the sweaty hell of messing about in miniaturised changing rooms with people occasionally bobbing their heads round the curtain saying, 'oh, sorry!' or, 'can I help you with that?' (I remember one particular occasion in Argentina when I was trying on a formal dress and the assistant just walked in on me in my underwear. Needless to say she felt the full Wrath of Jane that day).

I still need a new tshirt. To save myself going through the inevitable torture over again, I'm thinking it would be much less stressful and considerably easier to learn to make my own clothes. Bit of material, pair of scissors, needle and thread (ideally a sewing machine, even I know that much). Maybe one day I'll become a domestic Goddess, with rows of pickles and preserves in jars with twee little chequered cloth held tightly over their lids and the smells of cinnamon and nutmeg permanently mingled in my carefully embroidered dresses. Rest assured, you'll be the first to know if it ever happens.

“A woman who has no way of expressing herself and of realizing herself as a full human being has nothing else to turn to but the owning of material things.”