Anti-therapy

I have been having some retail anti-therapy.

This is the inverse of the usual sort of therapy, because you start off feeling fine and cheerful and come away exhausted, stressed and bad-tempered.

There was a very sad thing in the post office today.

A woman was buying hand sanitiser.

She was already enveloped from the top of her head to her toes in hazard-protective plastic. She wore a huge plastic apron and plastic gloves and her hair was buried under a shower cap. She wore a face mask and a face shield on the top of it, and I felt desperately sorry for her, because either she was unspeakably sick and too alone for somebody else to come to the post office for her, or she had become so anxious that she was too afraid to be in the world any more.

Neither is very nice.

When I came back from the post office it was time for us to go out in the world, and whilst I would not say I was afraid of it, I was jolly sick of it by the time I got back.

It was very definitely anti-therapy. I took Oliver to purchase some new trainers and shorts for his visit to the Number Two Daughters in the land of maple syrup and mounties and mooses, which happens in about four weeks. You cannot go on an aeroplane with holes in your trainers.

He has now got one pair of smart trainers. His feet have become enormous, only one size smaller than Mark’s feet now. We are saving up for a Spare Pair as well. 

The shorts, on the other hand, were a different sort of difficulty. You have to find ones with long legs, because he has got those, and the tiniest waist imaginable, because he has got that as well. Then you find that they have only one solitary pair in this size, and that it is priced at £39.99, so you put them back no matter how perfectly they fit.

Go to the next shop and repeat until either you are sick of it or you decide that you can probably spare £39.99, if the alternative is one more wretched shop.

After that we went to Asda.

Asda was every bit as ghastly as it usually is, and considerably more expensive.

Only another few weeks of colossal expense to go. In hardly any time at all now, we will have another Prime Minister. I have read their list of promises in the august Daily Telegraph, and whoever gets in it is quite clear that they are going to wave a magic wand and fix all our little problems. Orange juice and butter will once again become affordable by normal people, wine will sensibly be classed as an everyday essential, and the world sausage famine will be resolved.

How excited I am.

In the meantime I was not at all sorry to get home.

Oliver was very patient, and helped me sort everything out, until I showed him the Right Way to hang trousers on the washing line, after which he rolled his eyes and sloped off. The fridge has become very full. We have become a household that purchases things like custard doughnuts and chocolate flavoured yoghurt. Mark and I do not eat these things when Oliver is not in residence, although I suspect that Mark might like to.

I put everything away and we both dashed off to work. Oliver is saving up like mad for his holidays and I am saving up like mad for more trainers and the next trip to Asda.

I will see you tomorrow.