Failure to buy

So I met up with Marcosy yesterday for what was supposed to be the shopping spree to end all shopping sprees. I literally expected to see money burn.

We started off by heading to Sweatshop in Teddington because Marcosy wanted to buy a Nike+ running top despite the fact that he doesn't own an iPod Nano or a Nike+ running kit, and he doesn't run outside in the real world. Sadly for him, they didn't have any, or maybe they saw him coming and hid them? Who knows. What they did have, though, was a black Nike running top with blue shoulders - which looked exactly like the uniforms from Star Trek: Voyager. Despite constant badgering from me, Marcosy did not buy one, I suspect because he doesn't want to look like Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram.

On to Kingston we went, where we met up with Yaz. As I mentioned yesterday, all three of us want new iMacs, but unfortunately I can't buy one until we upgrade our clockwork software at work. But Yaz and Marcosy have no such problems! So, after a delightful coffee in the market square where we were rained on a little and harrassed by starlings, we wandered up to the Apple Store where I hoped to see credit cards igniting before my very eyes. There we were perving over the 24 inch iMacs, when some Apple dude (or should that be iDude?) came up to offer us advice. He was called Dave, and Yaz became rather besotted with him.

Apparently he had twinkly eyes.

Anyway, they stood there for a while chatting away, maybe exchanging phone numbers, so I walked off around the store. And lo, what did I discover? An iPhone.

Yes, I said: an iPhone.

It was owned by a customer, and bizarrely for me (I'm always constantly aware of stranger danger) I actually started talking to the bloke about his iPhone. He'd bought it off eBay for 400 quid, but it wasn't unlocked so he actually couldn't use it to make calls. It was effectively the most expensive 8GB MP3 player in the world. Anyway, he wanted to buy a speaker dock and an Apple remote so he could control it from across his living room. At one point he put his iPhone in an iPod hi-fi, and stepped back about five metres. I'm ashamed to say for the first time in my life I actually had a vision of me stealing something; I pictured myself dashing forward, nabbing it, and running off, never to be seen again.

Thankfully I restrained my thieving urges. And anyway, he had some really crappy music on it.

When iPhone guy left I turned back to Marcosy and Yaz, who for a variety of dismal and pathetic reasons had decided "not to buy today." I scowled, because of all of us I had ended up spending the most money and I'd only bought one sheet of wrapping paper and a 45p tag, and told Yaz that Dave would be disappointed in her.

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On our way back to the car park I tried on a jacket that I'd seen and really liked. Unusually for me, it's a rather smart jacket, and it does kind of remind me a little bit of the maroon uniforms from Star Treks II-VI, which I probably shouldn't admit to. I really liked it, but I wasn't sure I wanted to spend 150 quid on it. Still, Sparky Ma and I are heading to Kingston on Friday for one of our traditional marathon shopping sessions, so I have time to think about it and decide if I should buy it then. If anyone's interested in what it looks like, click here. It's called the Battle Denim Blazer, and I think it would make me look quite dapper during the winter months.