shopping

I have a love-hate relationship with shopping. I hate consumer megaplexes with food courts full of people with obese wallets and waistlines. I like sauntering along mean strips of shops on Main Street. I hate shopping for others and love shopping for myself. Today I shop with gusto. It’s all about me.

My son Mo and his partner Katie return from their round-Australia trip before Christmas. They live with his mother while looking for a place to rent. Now they have that place. Sometime this week a truck will remove the furniture they left here when they headed north last May and I moved back here from Bendigo.

I’m about to be without shelves for my bed linen—none of which is linen—and a television and a microwave. The good vacuum cleaner goes; it’ll be sorely missed. Sundry items, like a flowery wall-clock, won’t be missed at all.

Until eight days ago I dare not contemplate replacing these things. I have no job and no bank balance. But a healthy income stream starts on Thursday, so today I’m maxing the credit card in anticipation.

I wake at half five. Damn, the shops aren’t open. I pedal to the gym but the pool is out of order and the swimmers have migrated to the cycle room and all the bikes are taken. I pedal home and start shuffling clothes in the built-in cupboards in the two front rooms to accommodate towels and sheets and doona covers. I unplug the microwave and lug it out to the carport.

    

My good woman is along for the ride. First, the television. I’ve contemplated not having one for about eight and a half seconds. A known brand is clearing stock from its Nunawading outlet where my good woman bought a telly two months ago. I buttonhole a small Filipino salesman at the door and buy the same model: no discussion, no fuss.

I can’t go to my first day on the job in Adelaide with my grubby backpack, so we visit a luggage showroom in a converted service station and each emerge with a lightweight case on wheels that satisfies the carry-on dimensions for 90 per cent of the world’s airlines. My good woman’s is solid silver, mine black with orange trim.

I score two fine shirts and pair of strides for $15 all up at the Lutheran op shop in the square near my good woman’s place. All appear to be new. I’ll wow them in Adelaide at the national staff conference.

“Over there, in front of the potted palm, with the CEO. Who’s the spiffy dude in the zany pink business shirt?”

“Think he’s the new Victorian state project officer. Class act, eh?”

  

Rock on.