Shopping

I remember the first time I came to Paris, the highlight of my aunt and uncle’s visit was to go to Fnac. I wasn’t sure what was special about it, it just seemed like the biggest ever Our Price to me (a chain of record shops when I was a kid). There certainly were a lot of records there, but at fifteen I was unable to see its full potential. When I lived in Madrid there was a Fnac off Sol near the Corte Ingles (a department store). I still wasn’t over enamoured with it then. It was a good place to get concert tickets, but I couldn’t see how it had claimed that space in the European psyche. And then I arrived in Paris.

Fnac is as much a part of French culture as the baguette and the French language. It sells ... things. I bought my first mobile phone in Fnac and then my first DVD player. I bought my i-pod there, my digital camera. I go there to stand in the presence of really expensive, really shit hot speakers. Sometimes when no one is looking I stroke those speakers. I stand in front of the guide book section and wonder whether to buy the Lonely Planet or the Guide Routard. I go there to wander by the piles of CD’s that are there to tempt you. ‘Look at me,’ they rustle as your fingers glide over their wrapping. There’s a spot in every Fnac where a little space has been provided, music is piped and there are French men lounging around on the floor with their heads buried in the latest BD (Comic book).

Fnac is one of the only stores that can legally open on Sundays. Fnac sells culture, so Fnac can sell.

I wondered past Fnac’s magnetic field yesterday and could not resist its pull through the doors and up the escalators. I glided around the camera section, CD section, DVD section, past the tills. I was on that golden high of clutching a Fnac bag. I got home and manically ripped off the cellophane wrapping, whacked up the sound on the CD player and then realised I had intended to buy salad!

Anyway here are some other things that you can buy in France.

Phoktober 23^rd

Phoktober 24^th

Phoktober 25^th

Phoktober 26^th

Phoktober 27^th

Phoktober 28^th

Phoktober 29^th

Phoktober 30^th

CED – complete and unabridged*

On Monday I spent something like ten minutes googling the word ‘communion’. In my head I had this idea that there were various other meanings that did not involve a wafer thin host. Despite this certainty Google was not initially forthcoming. And then it slapped me in the face: I don’t have a dictionary. What sort of writer doesn’t have a dictionary? I used to have a dictionary, or rather I lived in a house where there was a dictionary and when I left that house the dictionary sort of accidentally on purpose ended up in my boxes. The only problem with that little ploy was that when I needed somewhere to store my stuff when I moved to Mexico, I used the same house that I had pilfered the dictionary from in the first place. I was left with no choice but to return it to its rightful owner. Then as I may have mentioned before I moved eight times and on seven of those occasions there was always a dictionary in the house, as well as a BIG Spanish-English dictionary and a BIG French-English dictionary, but no BIG English dictionary and recently before my eighth move no dictionary at all and it didn’t seem a problem until Monday night.

So how do you choose a dictionary? The first decision involves deciding where to buy it. I didn’t want to turn up at home with a huge tome and discover I had accidentally bought a US English Dictionary. To limit the probability of that event I decided to go to the hugely over-priced WHSmiths on rue de Rivoli. I thought it would be hard to focus on buying the dictionary and I would get distracted by all the millions of fictional words around me. I was distracted until I turned them over and the 19€ price tag brought me crashing back to reality. So having wended my way to the little room where all things Englishy may be found I discovered that I didn’t really have that big a decision to make: Collins or Oxford English Dictionary. Oh, I had kind of hoped I would have a little more choice to make.

So I pulled the display copies off the shelf and read the definition of communion in both: communion 1 an exhange of thoughts, emotions, etc. 2 possessing or sharing in common; participation 3 (foll by with) emotional or spiritual feelings (for):communion with nature. And then we get onto the religious definitions... Yep, I was definitely communing with this dictionary. The Oxford definition left me cold. But was one word enough to clinch it? So, I turned to the word I once thought I had invented: tootles. Tootle 1 to go, esp by car. Mmm, Oxford mentioned in a lesiurely manner which fit in more with my definition that to tootle was to do so in a Pooh bear state of wandering. But then I found toodle-pip in the Collins and I decided that actually the definition of communion was more important than a word I had defined years ago.

And now that I have the nearly 2000 page tome propped open beside me I’m finding out all sort of stuff, like did you know that ‘butters’ is British slang for very ugly? Or that drink-dialling is the inadvisable practice of making a phone-call while drunk?

* although I was tempted to call this post milf!

Shop till you drop

2nd August 2006

Ubud is definitely the place to do this, but first we spent the morning trying to plan our next move. Wayan – Ketut’s wife – informed me that our route via Gunung Batur (a volcano which will feature more later) was not the best. We ummed and ahhhed and booked things and cancelled things. Estrella came up with some alternative routes and then Ketut turned up and sorted out our Bali light trip. Driver to Amed with a wee tour thrown in, a hotel booked and all this in time for us to go and sample another of the restaurants down cheap street. The toilet was out back through this labyrinthine family compound and you needed a guide to find it, but man the food was good.

So with full stomachs and wallets we hit the streets of Ubud. Shopping tally? Estrella? Well this could be difficult cos boy that girl can shop: there was definitely a skirt, some trousers, a couple of tops and then I start to lose count. Kim: wedding present, a couple of pictures and a wedding outfit which was a whole experience of wrapping her up, unwrapping her, pinning her up, tying knots here and there and then just to make sure she gets it right on the day a whole step by step photo shoot. The shop assistant was well into the step by tiny step so in the end I had to pretend I was taking the shots. Me: two barong pictures, some cushion covers, a pair of trousers which could probably fit me and a couple of friends in and a nice new ring to replace the one that got too big and the one where the stone fell out.

Exhausted by the last few hours Estrella and I stopped for a fruit juice and a few moments to plan how we were going to pack all this shit, sorry I meant stuff. Meanwhile Kim went all the way down Monkey Forest Road to the Monkey Forest to commune with the nice friendly monkeys. She returned a wee while later with two more sarongs and the promise of two for one mojitos. It turns out they were a drink and snack all in one, lovely bits of mango and lashings of rum (yum). The girls had ginger ones.

So after our penultimate running of the gauntlet with the barking dogs of Ubud, we packed, checked our departure time, settled the bill and somehow ended up in the same restaurant as lunchtime. Well you know you can never get enough of a good thing...