this is not the shopping experience you were looking for...

today, after hearing about it more than a few times, i was a recipient of the Argos Experience. Argos is probably best described as all the joys of catalogue-shopping, but with the added agravation of having to actually leave the house. the way it works is thus: you head into the store and walk up to one of the desks upon which there is a catalogue, a terminal and a notepad. you flick through the catalogue and find what you want. today, for me, it was a doona. every item has a unique 7-digit code which you can punch into the terminal to see if the store has one in stock. odds are they don't have it, but there are a range if similar items you can try. once you've found one that fits the bill and which the terminal says they have you write the code down on a piece of paper and take it to a cashier and pay for it. once paid you're furnished with an order number which you take to a third desk where the pickers find the thing and give it to you. simple? sure. why not.

i was more than a little irritated before i even walked into the store. i'd been out to Primark (purveyors of all things cheap and nasty) a couple of days prior and picked up bed linen to replace the stuff i'd been kindly loaned by louise's cousin way back when we first moved into base-camp a couple of months ago. i'd just been paid for the first time, and sorting that out has been high on my agenda. unfortunately i ran afoul of a) the fucking bullshit customer service you get in cheap-arse stores and b) the British aversion to the cold, which is why they had only 2 weights in doonas: Really Fucking Warm and Survive A Nuclear Winter. these weights are designated by TOG ratings. i now know that 15 is as high as it goes and i wish i'd been wiser prior to purchase otherwise i'd have walked the hell out of the fucking store instead of grabbing the last queen-size TOG 13.5 doona they had in stock. que a couple of days later once i'd washed the doona cover (i like to wash these things before i use them) and tried to sleep under the damn thing. last night i woke up every half hour or so in a sweat, overheating and boiling in my skin. this morning's trip to Borough Markets was set aside and instead louise and i walked into Brixton.

it was a beautiful day today - warm (by comparison to lately) with a sunny sky, so i took the opportunity to wear short-sleeves and get some sun on my pasty skin. we checked a few things out in Brixton before entering Argos and by this time what little sanity i had left after the night before was wearing thin. after flicking through the catalogue and trying the codes for anything cheap that fit the bill (i'd figured on getting a TOG 7.5 doona on the theory there was no way i could overheat under something described as "summer" weight) and finding that anything that fit my needs was "not in stock" i was so frustrated i was about ready to take my head in my hands, tear my face off and stick it to the wall. fuck it. i picked the cheapest, close-enough option and paid for it before waiting at the pick-up area while pushy motherfuckers waved their tickets at the harried staff. through great fortitude i managed to not drop anyone to their knees and beat their brains out on the counter before i was handed my item and bolted for the door.

i hate to say that this was a fair indication of my day thereafter, but i'll save that for another post...