Back to Canterbury

So one thing I forgot to mention in my previous post is highstreet shopping. Whilst Adam and I were walking up and down the highstreet one too many times (after a while we started avoiding the highstreet at all costs) we concluded that whether you are in London, Edinburgh or Canterbury, it's the same shit in a different place. Each city has the same highstreet stores: your Debenhams, Waterstones, Marks and Spencer, WHSmith, Boots, HMV, H&M and well the list goes on, but the only thing that changes is the scenery. In Edinburgh you walk along Princes street underneath the castle next to the gardens. In London you squirm through the hustle and bustle of massive sidewalks ( I think Oxford street gives more space to foot passengers than auto traffic) and looming stores. In Canterbury the stores are smaller, the crowds are just smaller than London and the stores are in what look like converted houses rather than London's enormous warehouse like buildings. All are most pleasant to look at, but is that the point of going out to purchase silly looking euro-fashion and sit inside the basement of a Starbucks drinking more caffeine than your body should probably take in? Sometimes I find it hard to reconcile, but then I just think of the endless miles of Stripmalls in the US: bland single-story buildings with monotonous and unchanging storefronts no matter whether it's a shoewarehouse or kitchen appliance store with several hectares of cars sprawled out on a desolate canvas of black where the only thing to direct you toward freedom are dashes of yellow paint here and there. And then I think, at that point, I'd much rather be standing infron of this starbucks than that one. Besides, at least here I am bound to hear 4 or 5 languages I've never heard before rather than trying to distinguish a Minneapolitan accent from a Fargoan one.

So there is no reason to come down from London to go shopping in Canterbury, or vice versa, unless you want bigger stores with more (diverse) people. I guess that sometimes it all just seems so fraudulent to create this nice looking place to engage in a spend-for-all and go home with 6 or 7 different bags under your arms and nothing left in your wallet only to realise you need to make space in your closet and home for everything you just bought. Maybe Europeans wouldn't come out in throngs if they had to shop in places like stripmalls but I think this is changing, and rather quickly at that. Oh. I better get back to work eh?