How do you respond to, “Let’s go shopping?”

Actually, I thought this was a skeleton and death by shopping was the line!

We are driving to Ciara’s last piano lesson of the school year when she asks, “Can we go into London today to shop?” Now if you read daily you may guess my thoughts, “ I really don't like shopping and definitely not when I have to take trains, note plural, to that great Temple in the East, Westfields.”

I was a bit surprised as I don't see many 17-year-olds shopping with their dads and I had happily resigned myself to reading and writing in coffee shops. I sought for a better way to meet the dread I was experiencing and an alternative thought was supplied, “I should be honoured that she is asking me.”

I was having one of my days where my ‘normal focussed ok let’s do it mind’ was ‘not normal focussed and do I really have to?’ Never sure from where these days come but like a downpour in Summer, they come leaving you feeling dampened in spirit.

Irritability soon appears and with it concerns about our finances and how much this trip will cost. Funny thing is that such concern never appears when I am booking myself a seat at some spiritual seminar or buying a book that must be bought!

I then convince myself that I haven't the energy as I repeatedly sit down after washing a few dishes and doze off. Yet something in me fights against my excuses and by 2 we are at the platform.

I am still trying to ‘act my way into feeling excited’ though progress is slow. Meanwhile, Westfields is jammed with so many people that I consider crowd surfing. I am learning I am not into shopping or indoor shopping malls with thousands of noisy people. I sit with the dogs waiting for their owners to return.

Ciara realises, once again, that I am not the best shopping companion and we enter the compromise stage. She helps me find a quiet spot to sup tea beside a bookshop. Surprisingly she returns before I finished my cappuccino due to experiencing unhelpful assistants.

She is not done yet and so we emerge 30 minutes later from Piccadilly underground station where I am greeted by the featured photo. Yes Banksy, or whoever, you know how I feel. I am humoured and validated that the feelings I have are perhaps not so abnormal.

We eat in the fading Pizza Hut we have been eating in since she can remember visiting London and I am revived by the nostalgia.

Soon we will be homeward bound so let’s take a selfie to remind me of how grumpy I was yet as the day moved on a smile appeared.

My head is so big it blocked out the famous neon sign!

Funny isn't it how the mind can generate obstacles yet we have to get on with living?

g.