I went shopping today, to buy myself lots of nice new, fluffy clothes for the impending Winter. Brilliant fun, I hear you say; and you'd imagine I had larks and laughs all day - you'd be wrong. Shopping, out of my city, combines two things I loathe with such a burning passion that it's a surprise I didn't bite my own foot off on the journey, in order to numb the woe. Travelling to go shopping means: getting the train, full of people (god bless the Summer holidays), and then spending the afternoon traipsing behind people who travel so unbelievably slowly it's a shock to see they're not going backwards. It's horrendous. It's mind-bogglingly depressing to spend all day behind a gelatinous derriere, wibbly-wobbling its way towards the nearest café, jiggling its way towards the pub, or winding its way towards the nearest food outlet. Ah, and the prams. Good grief the prams. Everywhere. How many people have kids? Honest to whatever, it's criminal.

I will start, as is tradition, at the beginning of my journey. How wonderfully formulaic of me. It's a carriage crammed full of pre-pubescent, slack-jawed knuckle-draggers, overweight cretins blobbing their way over two seats, and them men who look like they'd rather be repeatedly shanked than be where they are at that moment. I won't go into boring, adjective-replete, descriptions of each character-type, because I've done that before. I will instead talk about the journey. It was horrible. I don't like trains. I like the idea of trains, in fact, I love the idea of trains - it should be a fantastically infantile experience, chugging your way through the forest. But it's not. It's hellish. It's slow, boring, smelly, rickety, and obscenely expensive. To recreate the idea of getting on a train (for you trainaphobes), simply get in a shed, and ask someone to push you very slowly uphill, whilst other people shout through the door, make obnoxious phone calls in your ear, and expel their gasses repeatedly. Straight up your nose. Again. And again. Fortunately, the train was punctual, and relatively quick, considering the journey I take is... how shall we say, not the most enjoyable. Too many stops. Too many "ham"'s: Cosham, Bosham, Gosham. Erugh. That's a minor quibble though. All things aside, as the day went, the train journey was hedonism in its purest form. Divine.

Shopping. Is. Awful. People. Are. Awful. I'm awful. I'm probably more annoying than they are. I don't care. They're not me. I will judge them all. ALL! It's hours, upon hours, of plodding around bric-a-brac facsimiles. It's tawdry clothing; orange salesmen, humidity, people, people, people. Everywhere. Everywhere you look. You're in the urinal: there's a man spitting half a fluid ounce of phlegm out of his mouth. You're in a coffee shop; the entire continent of Europe is in front of you pooling their money to buy a slice of lemon cake. You're in a small boutique, trying to find something alternative, the entire world already owns what you're looking at. How do I know that? They're all IN THERE TOO!

I just can't stomach being around that many people for that lengthy period of time. I don't know what the fuck would make me happy. I get bored when I'm alone. I get angry when I'm around too many people. I need... a close-tangible circle of friends. I don't mean that in the psychological sense, of having a good 'social-network' (not facebook, bottom feeder), I mean that in a physical sense. I want to be constantly circled by 4 of my good friends, I will move in tandom with them, rotating slowly in the circle, as I traverse the streets of woe. They will fend off the misery of the population, the incessant screeching of noise-makers, and the people collecting "£2.50 a week" for some unknown charity so inordinately complex I'm always tempted to pay them to go away. Maybe that's the shtick. It'll be a cynic's sphere of exclusion. It sounds like bliss.
Takers?