Tis the season...to shop!

It won't come as a surprise to any regular readers of my jottings that I love shopping. I've mentioned it before. Indeed I have probably mentioned it on several occasions. I'm proud of the fact. Shopping for me can fill a few hours whether purchases are made or not. It's the fun of handling all the various potential buys, the comparing of the prices, the finding of that essential bargain, and the carrying of the bags home. (As long as they are bags from the right sort of shops of course!)

I didn't get to do much retail in Berlin. Too much time spent eating dry bread! So this week, several visits into town to do some training, and do some dialogue dubbing have afforded me a couple of opportunities to pop into shops on that mecca of retail highways - Oxford Street.

The excuse behind these visits was that I'm looking for a bag. A small to medium shoulder bag in black that will carry my iPad, a folder, and a few other odds and ends. Not that I don't have  a bag,  but that I never have enough bags.  Wherever you are in the world it's impossible to get me to walk past a shop selling bags and shoes. I suppose, in that sense, I live in a permanent menopause.

One of my first ports of call yesterday heading back from dubbing three integral lines as "Hotel Manager" in a forthcoming television mystery drama, was @marksandspencer on Oxford Street.  Their bags were pretty overpriced. Anything with a hint of leather was approaching £100, at the very least, and everything else had a distinctive plastic feel to it.

 More joy in the trouser department (if you'll forgive the pun) where on a rail I spotted a pair of grey well cut corduroy trousers in exactly my size reduced from £35 - £22 and then to the alarmingly attractive price of £7.50. My retail thinking has always been that if you do see an item at a ridiculously low bargain price, you should buy it whether you need it or not. In this fashion we acquired enough Ikea glasses to cater for the army of a small African country.

So I took my corduroy prize to the nearest till, only to experience a distinct fall in the face department when the scanned price came up as £35.

The offending label...and Lindsay's thumb!

"But they are marked as £7.50" I said. The assistant was confused, and so called over a nearby colleague, Lindsay. Lindsay, it was turns out, was a manager. Never a title to inspire confidence these days in a culture where everyone who works is a manager. Exactly what Lindsay managed was a little unclear, but she said immediately that the trousers were incorrectly marked. I said she should take them back to the stand where I found them when there were several other pairs of corduroy trousers similarly priced.  She disappeared, only to return a few moments later and informed me that "Yes there are other pairs of corduroy  trousers at this price but they're green and blue. The grey ones aren't reduced. Somebody…." (and here she fixed me with a glare which had probably been present during the night of the Long knives in a prewar Berlin)  "….. Somebody has changed the price label". The inference was clear, as was the origin of Lindsay's training in customer relations. The General Pinochet School of charm!

 She repeated her accusation once more and said that unless there were two pairs marked at the same price she wasn't obliged to sell them to me. At this point it would have been good to know the ins and outs of retail law. Quote some obscure reference number followed by the words "Sale of goods act". Lindsay however looked immovable, so I've decided to take my "unhappiness" to a higher level.

Interestingly most of the entire menswear department in Marks & Spencer's yesterday was filled with linen trousers,swimming trunks and short-sleeved holiday shirts in cotton and linen. The temperature on Oxford Street yesterday was nearly freezing. We are about to face a weekend of snow and ice. It constantly amazes me that the retail calendar for stocking shops has taken no account of global warming and the change in the seasons, and still exists under the misapprehension that we all plan our clothes buying several months ahead.

On a cold below freezing February Saturday, I wanted to buy a long black cashmere overcoat. I went into Selfridges near where I happened to be. workingThe response in menswear? " It's the wrong season for a coat". Plainly the staff and buying heads of Selfridges arrive at work down climate controlled tubes. They are obviously haven't been outside the several days, which is why they too, in early February, were very heavy on the linen and the summer shirts.

In an age of instantaneous shopping and decisions, surely shops have to change this pattern. I don't know what @marksandpencer's retail figures will be like for this month - obviously £7.50 lower than they would have been if I'd been allowed to buy those trousers - but they can't be good if they're selling summer clothes in what is still the depths of winter.

The final retail find this week. The fact that if you've ever bought any shoes or a bag from Zara, you've been bugged. I love Zara. I like to  think that I discovered it before it became really mainstream, and though it's several years since my waist has been able to say hello to a pair of Zara trousers, it's hard to pass a branch by. Particularly in Spain and Portugal where the prices are ridiculously low, for the same products that we see here in England. Bags, scarves, shoes, I'm a Zara boy. In fact yesterday on my shopping expedition I was toting a Zara bag. A brown man bag bought from Zara in Lisbon for five years ago, and if I could have found the same thing in black in another shop yesterday I'd have been a happy man. I did notice, that as I was leaving some shops, the alarm was sounding and suspected my bag.

It sounded particularly loudly after I left the Zara on Oxford Street. A security guard followed me outside and asked me if he could have a word. Stepping back into the store he asked me if I'd ever bought anything Zara. I said well over the years yes but not  today.  He asked if I was wearing shoes that I might have bought at Zara previously.  The inference was becoming clear. Perhaps he had trained with Lindsay.  Pretending to not quite understand his reasoning understanding is reasoning I said "No, that this bag came from Zara about five years ago."

"Ah" he said,  "it's probably reactivated itself". To cut a long story down, Zara leave security tags in their products which after a while may reactivate themselves and sound the alarm at various shops. So that pair of faded suede Zara brogues that you thought were past their best, may suddenly prove electric once more. You can take the item to the till and they can deactivate it by passing it over a scanner. What they can't promise, and that they're quite open about this, is that the tag won't reactivate itself at some point again in the future. So you're marked out as Zara buyer whether you like it or not.  This definitely applies to bags and shoes evidently. Let's hope it does;t apply to anything more intimate, though with their sizing there is little chance that I'll have to have a pair of Zara knickers deactivated.

 I'm more than happy to spend an afternoon on the Internet clicking away and making purchases, but I prefer to have touched them in the shop first. To have handled them, and to feel and see just what I'm getting for my money. Though I know it is expensive for shops on the high Street to purely exist as showrooms while we make the actual purchases from the online giants, if the high street shops were actually selling the things that we wanted at the time of year when we wanted them, and at the prices that they say on the label, then high Street buying may be as appealing as high-street browsing.

I love shopping. I will always love shopping. I will always shop. Sometimes it's just a question of where.