Three words and I can guarantee your pity & sympathy: Westfield, Saturday, Afternoon. Mother was up for the weekend and probably due to both of us reading far too many magazines that preach such madness, we thought it was a good idea to embark on a mother-daughter bonding trip in one of Europe’s biggest shopping centres.
It wasn’t the greatest start that we had to queue to get off the tube platform at Shepherds Bush. I felt my shopping-phobic mother look at me pleadingly while I administered soothing phrases like “it’s fine, it’s always like this, once we get in there it really is massive, y’know” as we tried not to freak out at the sea of glazed-eyed pre-shoppers in front of us barely saying a word to each other. It was a bit too much like a zombie movie and Simon Pegg was nowhere to be seen. I admit – I did attempt to recall from Fox’s Walking Dead graphic novels what method was best to dispose of zombies if we needed to… blowing their heads off from what I could remember and there defs aren’t any gun-shops in Westfield = yikes.
After cheating and going straight to Fire & Stone for carbs and charming/slimy waiters (probably depends on how many carbs you’ve consumed), we browsed round Debenhams and swiftly realised that most of the stuff was either spangly party wear or late-summer wear, both felt rather optimistic on this cold, grey Autumn afternoon. I’ll spare you the details of every single shop we went in, I will say that black leather boots with zips up the insides that look ‘a bit 60s’ are NOT in plentiful supply in Westfield, that a shop assistant in M&S actually sneered at my mother when she very sweetly enquired in her best quite-posh telephone voice if there was a ‘Primani’ in Westfield (there isn’t, the nearest is Marble Arch, cheap ankle boots fans) and we got a bit too furious when inhaling the piped in bread smell with no such products to be seen anywhere (pumping carb smells into the path of vulnerable customers is MORALLY WRONG we both agreed).
Needless to say, we escaped to the M&S cafe after not too long, harped on about how overwhelming being bombarded with consumerism was then rinsed the 3 for 2 deal within an inch of it’s life in Boots and she bought one of the No 7 mascaras with the hi-tech fancy brushes that the posh actress with enormous eyes from Ashes to Ashes advertises on telly, despite being adamant she’d not seen any such campaign both in print or on the telly (she blatantly had, for the record).
Realistically, with one a borderline agoraphobic (well, she doesn’t do large amounts of people, especially when formed in a queue in front of her preventing her from paying for stuff and getting out of the shop in less than 5mins) retail-phobe that prefers to shop online (even shoes = hardcore) and the other perpetually skint so out of practice, we were not exactly in our comfort zone so did pretty well by managing not to fall out once all afternoon. I’d love to provide some powerful insight into consumerism in a time of economical crisis or even be able to spot trends/social behaviours that could be used for some genius marketing strategy but I’m afraid I got so overwhelmed with the scale of the place, the literal bombardment with branding – logos being chucked at you left, right at centre and watching hollow-eyed people around us stalk the place for bargains armed with arsenals of plastic. I guess I get more stressed out by the whole thing than I realised which is weird because the whole point is that shopping is meant to be an enjoyable experience, Westfield is designed in such a way as to make us enjoy ourselves more and therefore spend more. What happens when folk become immune to the fake bread smell (metaphorically speaking) and realise they can’t afford to buy any more Stuff? Armageddon?
