Shopping War

15th December 2012

We live near Exeter Football Ground, walk past it on our way into town, get caught up in the crowds flooding the pavements in their red and white striped scarves. Above us two whirring helicopters roar so low in the sky that we can’t hear each other talk. The High Street is thick with people and their umbrellas and their bulging carrier bags. 

I feel like I’m in a shopping war zone.

I never come into town on a Saturday and never on a Christmas Saturday but I’m on a train-set mission for my great-nephew’s present. And my husband is singing in a carol concert with his Global Harmony choir raising money for Wateraid. I sit in the dark auditorium and watch his dear face in the back row with the tenors - or devons as he sometimes calls them, and the shining faces of our friends as they sing. I’m glad the lights are down as most of the songs make me cry - John Lennon’s Imagine and Jessie J’s’ Forget about the price tag/we want to make the world dance’ and The Judd’s  ‘Love can build a bridge between your heart and mine/don’t you think it’s time’, and an African one  - Never Give Up.

We arrive home dripping wet - even my socks in my boots are wet. We have cheese on toast, olives, pickled garlic and sundried tomatoes for a late lunch the sky already getting dark over the soggy lawn and the blue tits snacking on the fat balls in the naked apple tree.

And I’m so grateful I don’t live in country really at war - or in Connecticut.