Money Spinner

Maybe I sit down, maybe I make a coffee; but I decide not to unpack a thing yet. I grab my wallet: and I go shopping. Before I know it I am proudly walking up one of the streets my mother departed on towards a bus stop I know only from maps; all thoughts of the past forgotten. I decide things can only get easier from here, and it is best to leap straight into it; the earlier I know that I can do something, the better. Nothing cheers me up better than shopping. I am standing somewhere I have never stood before, I do not know this place, I do not know the people. I am alone in a strange new city, but that is nothing compared to seeing my mother drive down the street away from me.
I love the shopping here. It’s fantastic, acres of things, three floors of shops wall-to-wall. A sensory feast for the repressed modern hunter-gather instinct in me. And oh the shoes! It’s all new and ready to be explored; it makes me smile in spite of everything. I have a list and money, a way to get home and hours to spare.

I buy many things including a huge piece of rolling luggage (you know the type you sometimes see people with at airports?) and I get pizza. The only problem is I don’t know where the bus stop is. Before I left I had it beaten into me by mother and my grandmother that one should always be careful about what side of the road they get the bus on. “Don’t get the bus on the wrong side of the road” was the resounding message. After walking up and down the main street twice I realise that there is no stop on the other side of the main road. I walk all the way to the train station and ask the attendant there. He assures me that there is a stop. I conclude that he knows nothing. So seeing as I am on that street anyway I retrace the bus route about a kilometre and a half to the nearest stop on the correct side of the road. I catch the bus and all is well. The next day I go back and try to find where the bus stops in the other direction, and end up walking even further and in a great arc. But on the plus side while walking along the freeway, some loon leans out of his mate’s car and yells “Hot bod!” at me, which made my day just a bit brighter.

I later learn from a nice lady waiting at the stop I got off at to begin with, that the bus only goes the one way, it does a loop and only stops on the left side of this road. So much for “Don’t get the bus on the wrong side of the road”.
I have returned many times to the shops, and have since learnt to take the idea that I might become a shopaholic more seriously. The huge second hand clothing shop is my greatest vice. Though I must say that debit cards are just as evil. You have none of that fishing around in your wallet and the real physical presence of money, not to mention the anxiety and guilt of actually handing over the notes. You just swipe your card and it magically and intangibly disappears. But the government keeps giving me money! What am I supposed to do? We keep being told, because of the recession, to ‘spend for your country’; which suits me fine. I approach it with great zeal.