Another Chronicle and Christmas Shopping

07-12-2007


Can't you just hear those nuts roasting over an open fire? That might be because they are my nuts and as usual around Christmas I have feck all idea of what to buy people and even less will power to actually get up and go shopping. Like 90% of the world population, no matter what they may claim, I hate shopping. When it comes to Christmas Shopping the hate goes up by a factor of a googleplex and keeps rising until sometime around March when things finally start to settle down and the sales die off.

It's not so much the shopping, the act of walking around stores like a number in the crowd, or the shop staff, constantly asking me questions when I didn't look for help or trying to add more items to my pile of things to buy just in case, because I generally just ignore all that. I don't mind being a number in the crowd and as for sales staff then generally get the idea when I kill them and stick their head on the nearest display.

It's the other numbers in the crowd!

I by no means am a small person. Standing at, what seems to be the new average, of six foot three inches it is sort of hard not to see me. Add to that the fact that I weigh in at a nice 13 stone and you can understand why people my mistake me for a wall or a tree sometimes. Despite my girt and height I am a nibble fecker (comes from years of running around tracks for school sports events) and can weave with the best of them through the throng. Plus I am one of those well-mannered lot, the sort of person that pushes old ladies across the road and slams doors open hard enough so that the woman behind me can follow through without needing to open it. So as I weave through the crowds I will avoid getting into other people's paths as much as possible.

It seems that others aren't aware of my intent and take pleasure in getting INTO my path, having just weaved into it!

I mean nothing is more annoying than when you are trying to get in, buy shit, get out and these two rotund fourteen years step in front of me and start to amble at a speed that would make an Ice Age look fast. But I can handle that, to a certain level while I wait for the next gap in the crowd to form so that I can nip around the two Stand-in Boulders from Indiana Jones, except that they keep stopping every four seconds.

FOR NO FUCKING REASON!

Not to mention that I think it is the same pair every time I go shopping, like we are somehow on a shopping trip sync or something. But this year I took a new approach. This year I threw manners out the window and strode through the shops with a purpose. Not to get in and out fast, that was just a bonus. This year I just march straight down the stores at full speed. Mothers pushing prams, four years being dragged along by disgruntled fathers, two fat hens laughing all the way. Each of these and more, decided to play chicken with a walking wall that removed the fuse and just lit the explosive directly. After the first of the boulder girls rebounded off my shoulder, spun a little to the left, and crashed into her friend the message was clear.

Get out of my fucking way or I will just go through you!

Yes it's rude, yes it's being a bollix, yes given the time of year everybody is a little frazzled with the shopping. But hell you can only have manners for so long until it gets annoying that nobody else has them. So to those reading this and saying "You're a prick!" I agree, but if you see people being knocked to the ground in a store near you you now know the reason, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Plus another Chronicle has been added today, this one baffles even me.

Happy Holiday Nightmare Shopping

Blue_jester