Shopping with your parents

[Trickyvee]

Re: Shopping with your parents

Nice post stud1al, I'm pretty sure these shopping habits shaped a generation. I remember when M&S went on the slide in the 90's and early 00's and I'm convinced it was through mass avoidance by people around our age, subjected to previous torture in their premises.

Once I got a bit older to the age where I wouldn't get picked off by dodgy strangers I actually refused to go in to M&S with my mam any more. She'd leave me on the seat next to the doors!

[darren]

Re: Shopping with your parents

whoa what a post!!

shocked u did not get arthritis typing out this post mate.hehe

yes 5 to ten hrs a week as a kid would be a long time.
can u remember what age you where during these times mate.
but ill bet u far preferred shopping with your dad.

yes i bet u just loved shopping at chrisrtmas.
i loved it seeing all the toys glittery stuff etc.
the atmosphere was incredible and so busy u could hardly move.

so on average sly u must have been going shopping on average 10 to 15 hrs per week.

OK, I'm back. This will be a long post. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

Through my time as a child, I've been subjected to shopping a lot, an when I say that, I really mean it. I'm talking about between 5 or 10 hours a week minimum. As a child, that's a lot of hours.

The weekly food shop was something I didn't mind as a kid, mainly because I knew I'd get something bought for me. Normally something sweet or novelty, or a LEGO model. In fact, I got bought so much LEGO that as the weeks passed that the models got increasingly expensive until I was getting the £10 to £20 model sets instead of the cheapest models. Because we used to go at exactly the same time every week, you could bet that there were other people that we made friends with because they were doing the same thing. Afterwards we'd go to a little take away and order Italian food, which mainly compromised of pizzas. In fact, I don't think I've had such good pizza since, the pizza from this place was super deluxe. As a child they also introduced me into eating chilli con carne, which come as a pizza topping. You could either have garlic or chilli con carne. I'd go for the chilli every single time.

On the Saturday my family (women) members would decide to go into the city to shop. In fact, it was very little that the decided against going out, even if the weather outside was lethal. Here I never got to go in the shops I wanted to go in, and every minute would seem like hours and hours. As a young boy I've spent more hours in C&A, BHS, M&S, Boots, Argos and a myriad of other shops that should have permanently damaged my psyche. In the summer it was always blazing hot, lethargy set in approximately 10 minutes after getting off the bus and it lasted until I got home. In the winter it was the exact opposite, it was as cold as it could possibly get, unless you went in a store where they had the heating cranked up. As soon as you walked through the door it made you instantly tired.

Of course, Christmas was a whole other bag. There was stuff to keep me occupied back then, although the cold/heat combo combined with the mass crowds was something I still don't really like in big doses. I love the bustle atmosphere you get when it leads up to Christmas, I actually went into the cities in the latter shopping days to soak it up. Not for long though, that would be stressful.

In contraswt, going shopping with my Dad was amazing. Everything I learnt about shopping I learnt from him. Look around, see what you like, do a price comparison and buy. No loitering and messing about. Get it. See what you want. Price compare. Buy. Done. This is the way shopping should be. Live it like your carparking is about to run out. Straight and to the point.

Sometimes in the summer the ladies of the family would decide to go shopping elsewhere. This meant that we'd have to take several buses and trains to the destination. This was always the best part of the day. When we arrived at where ever we were going to, it was always the same bloody shops, catalogue shops and stores we normally went to anywhere. I used to like going to Huddersfield because the cafe we went to in there had arcade machines of some rally game and Street Fighter II. I never got to play on them, but it was fun to watch. This cafe also did these massive saucer sized chocolate chip cookies. I seem to remember we had one of these cafes in my local city but it is no longer there now.

Pre-post edit: I just did a bit of research and it appears the Four Cousins is still in Huddersfield. There was one in Leeds but I am unsure if it closed up shop or moved premises, it used to be in a walk through arcade, but the arcade was boarded up quite some time ago. Whether there remains to be a Four Cousins in Leeds remains a mystery to me.

The other shopping that used to be done was in the school holidays. These combined the usual Saturday special outing to wherever, but normally involved town hopping between Morley, Dewsbury and Batley. These would be a mix of casual milling about shopping and food shopping.

The other shopping trip would be the Grandma pop-shop. This would involve a walk through baking hot sun pulling a stupid frigging trolley filled with those string bags to a litte arcade that had a few independant shops along with a shoe shop and all that other stuff. The walk there would have my Mum and Gran singing "P-p-p-presto!" over and over which was meant to entertain me, but just ended up winding me up. Presto was the name of the Co-op. If I was lucky my mum would buy me a set jelly from Presto.

I seriously hate shopping like this. Although saying that, there's not a woman I've had a relationship that been able to drive me insane with their shopping habits, simply because I am already a battle hardened shopper. I've perfected the skill of just following whoever I am meant to be following and shutting down all other major system that allow me to think outside of hurting feet, hunger or needing a toilet break.

So yeah, shopping. Ultimate shopping. It made me the man I am today. A bitter twisted human being who can turn into a drone when needed due to excessive exposure to shopping as a lad.

[Sly]

Re: Shopping with your parents

I was between birth to about 14, that's when I started working. Amusingly I worked in retail in those times.

[Richard1978]

Re: Shopping with your parents

I remember that more than once i waited outside while mum tried dresses on. About an hour later she'd come out and say she didn't like any of them

My Mum has done that a few times, she also once looked at loads of frozen chickens in a supermaket once until she found one she liked.

[battyrat]

Re: Shopping with your parents

Always got dragged out shopping,usually when I wanted to watch something on telly in the morning.Hurt more in the summer holidays when the better programs were on.I think that is why parants held my 10p pocket money back till Saturday so I would be more eager to go shopping with them.Can remember carrying the odd bag home from an early age and got quite loaded down in my mid teens with homeward bound shopping.We had to walk and it was quite a way.Early on there were just small shops around town untill the supermarkets started to move in.Mum went to one then another opened which was cheaper then the first so she started to use that one etc.By the time bigger supermarkets had moved into town I was in my teens and computer games had hit the shelves.Mum used to go shopping and I used to go to whsmiths for the spectrum games next door.Had a paper round by then,untill I started work.Even then I never got off the hook when it came to shopping.