RETAIL RUMINATIONS

Look what I've got! Yes, I finally stopped dithering and used my supermarket points to get an MP3 player. No, I don't know how to use it yet! All I want to do is listen to The Archers on the thing.

Christmas is coming but there is little sign of it in the stores here. Only one or two smaller shops have decorated their windows. Come on, shopkeepers - the place needs brightening up now! [Most families don't decorate their homes until the Immacolata Concezione holiday on 8th December. They will all display a crib and some will have a tree as well.] This morning I bought my first panettone of the season - well, it's a chocolate cake baked by the slow rising panettone method - because I wanted the pretty container it came in.

I also spent a fair bit at the perfumery, replenishing my skin care supplies. [Why does everything run out at the same time?] Yet again, I thought of how much I miss department stores. In the perfumery, the ladies will rummage through their cupboards to find you a few samples but you miss out on the "gifts" you would obtain in a department store when a particular beauty company is running a promotion. I always end up with a drawer full of samples of makes I don't use and I need the promotional goody bags for the practical, travel-sized items they usually contain! I suppose I could go to Catania, where there is a Rinascente store, for my make-up and I will consider it, though I 've gone off that shop since the "g and t incident", a story I'll retell here as only the five or so people who have followed the blog from the very beginning will know it: I had had lunch, preceded by two gin and tonics, in their restaurant and asked at the cash desk for directions to a taxi rank. As I walked away, I heard a cashier say, "Ha! She's had two gin and tonics and now she needs a taxi." I've never forgiven them for that and I wish I had turned round and told them what I thought of them, but I didn't. [I'd only been here three months and wasn't as assertive as I would be now.]

When I left full-time secondary teaching, I toyed with the idea of becoming a make-up lady in a large store. Now, I lack the retail gene and would have been quite hopeless at selling anything to anyone, but I fancied the idea of standing there in one of those nice uniforms that a company like Lancôme would give you and spraying perfume on passers-by. Then a friend pointed out that I'd probably want to hit most of the rich, leisured women who would use the store during office hours and I realised that she was right.

The last photo is one of Milan Cathedral that I took some years ago from the restaurant at the top of the Rinascente store in Milan. Now that's what I call a store!