Right, I know there is a recurring theme of misery and spite across my blogs, fair enough; quite a lot winds me up, my goat is perhaps to easy to get. But generally, I’m a happy chap who can light up a room (like a chip pan fire) or literally suck the life out of it when moody (not like that).
I was a happy chap yesterday, and then it hit me, I have to buy presents; I have to traipse around shops spending money on crap. And then Purley Way happened, and I was sad, and angry. In fact, as a shopping experience, it was like having a large calloused finger stuck up my freezing cold winter bum hole, with no semblance of a lube. Please, read on..
I’d been out late Friday, and spent yesterday morning pratting about trying to do something, anything, to put off the first limp attempt at Christmas shopping. When it passed lunch time I realised I needed to get my skates on, my options were simple, Balham, no shops, Tooting, awful place, about 3 practical shops, Streatham, no, too many reasons to list, Westfield, too far, too busy, too shoppy, Croydon, no Lord, please no, please don’t put me in a position where I HAVE to go to Croydon, the shitty little groups of hip retarded rude boys with half their underpants showing, walking up and down the high street, doing arthritic hand gestures to their “Breadbin” Trashy rude boy worshipping girls slutting up and down, with their greasy hair scraped back so hard their eyes sit on the top of their heads like toads, draped in cheap H Samuel gold, and then the dirty looking pikey men in Lonsdale tracksuits with black under their finger nails and cigarette yellow fingers, walking around with that desperate, I might beg, I might steal look on their faces, and finally the chip pan fat shiny faced most likely single mums using their uterus as a grappling hook to get their fat arses on the property ladder, dragging their poor hapless kids around pound shops only paying them attention to shout expletives at them for doing anything but drag behind them like Indiana Jones behind that train. No, fuck that, thanks though.
I decided I would go to Purley Way, avoiding Croydon center, I knew there was a Toys R Us there, and I could get some of my boys stuff, and there was some other stuff there so maybe Daddy could find some gadget to briefly make himself feel better about the shambles that is his life.
I’d only ever been there once before on foot and it was a nightmare, it had been snowing which had turned to ice, and because Purley Way shopping was designed only for cars, it was a fucking nightmare, not expecting any people on foot nothing was gritted and it was like Mohammed Ali on Ice, and a few times I nearly fell into the stream of cars.
I would plan it better this time; I could go straight to Toys R Us and then straight back onto the tram and home. I departed with this in mind, I never tagged in my Oyster Card, fuck Southern Trains, fuck them hard, and don’t even give them a cuddle after, cunts, I was going out of my zone, but seriously, fuck them, they make my daily commute an abject misery, so no way am I paying for a journey on their shambles train service if I can help it.
I then changed onto the tram and never tagged in again. I like the tram, I genuinely forgot. I got to Ampere Way and saw ticket inspectors, fuck it I thought, and walked past them undetected, only because they were already writing out tickets for about 3 people. Then I went through elephantine Ikea and into the Valley Retail Park. Again, this was designed with purely cars in mind, a token goat track for people ran through the middle, and once you are in, you are in. Another reason why you need a car here is because the shops are about 3 miles apart, and Ikea is about 4 miles wide inside, and you don’t use a shopping trolley, you just drive round with your windows and boot open, it’s the only store with fucking speed cameras and traffic wardens. By the time I had got to the first shop I had nearly been run over several times. I felt rushed and harassed and couldn’t remember where Toys R Us was and walked around the entire retail park trying to find a way out without having to go back trough Ikea. Eventually two blokes who looked like WW2 French resistance fighters told me of a “hole in the wall”; I got through and on a road back up to Purley Way to the next “outbreak” of shops where I was almost run over by gypsies in their cut and shut transit van full of scrap metal (probably stolen) en route to the intentional dump in the area, the rest are purely just through people happy to live amongst their own shit.
I went into Comet, just to see if it was like the advert, all the staff cocking about with the products trying to turn 30 George Foreman fat frying grills into a massive hot keyboard that they play with their faces, all screaming in different octaves. It wasn’t like that (unfortunately), just the usual, dour faced Armand Van Helden bearded twats skulking around in shirts and ties, with the lesser subordinates in polo shirts. Then, there is Argos (named after the Greek god of Catalogues), the concentration processing centre of shops, you have to stand around waiting for something you have never actually seen, apart from in a thumbnail sized picture in a catalogue, its good that you haven’t actually seen it, because what you get is a shattered smashed up with bits missing version of what you was expecting, this is because the low paid staff spend most of their time in the back playing keepy uppies or basketball with all manner of stock, you cant buy presents from here, you cant risk it, to see your nippers face on Christmas day when he opens his toy and its in pieces like Lego, but isn’t Lego and was never supposed to be..
Then it was on to the giant Sainsbury’s, a shop trying to be master of all trades, like Tesco actually is, but failing, a woeful selection of toys at unremarkable prices, same with games and DVD’s and then, finally, on to Toys R Us, which was rammed and I realised I didn’t have a single idea what to buy my 6 year old. I thought for a while about just going out with him and letting him get what he wants (up to a point) as if he is anything like me, I personally don’t like suprises in gifts; I would rather have money, something I want, or even nothing. I’m not ungrateful, I just don’t see the point of a jumper you won’t ever wear (even if it did actually fit), or aftershave that makes your skin come up in blisters. [Yeah, but it’s the thought that counts you ungrateful cunt] Yeah, I thought I told you that Lynx gives me asthma?
I eventually left Purley Way with nothing apart from a bad taste in my mouth and a good idea of what hell was like. The idea of taking my boy out for a shopping trip seeming more appealing. On the way back I had to go through Mitcham, a place so awful that Iraqi immigrants have begged to go home and the cry of “bring out your dead can still be heard on Friday nights), I don’t know anyone from Mitcham who doesn’t hold some sort of Guinness book of records for being a victim of crime, most muggings, longest knife ever held to a throat, fastest pick pocketing. I’m not saying everyone there is bad, but let’s put it this way, if it was consumed by a huge earthquake or flood, I think I’d pull that face, you know the one that you pull when someone really old and doddery dies, and it’s not like you are sad that they are gone, it’s more like a relief? 
At Mitcham Junction station and with about 20 minutes until a train dared to come through, I realised I was desperate for a piss. No toilet on the station, probably stolen, no cubby hole to piss in, I wandered out into the nothingness and noticed a path into part of Mitcham Common, famous for its high number of male on male rapes and ventured in. I went down a little slope into a good spot for a long horsey piss and slid down, caught my balance, and slid again, catching my balance once more and undoing most of the work that weeks of physio have done on my back, I did a long steamy winters piss and then realised I had slid on dog or human shit, a massive shrine of it at that. It had gone over the sole of the trainer and up the back and the back of my jeans. For a moment I hated all dogs, but realised that I need to sort my shit out (literally) and started doing the 45 degree scrapes on all manner of things and made my way back to the station. Getting on the train (with the faint aroma of recently trodden on shit in the air) I was glad to be heading back to Balham, to pick up beers and chocolate for a night in, the bleak Flanders Field landscape of Mitcham quickly disappears and I made plans to make sure that at no point I would ever go back.
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