I have always had a love-hate relationship with shopping. By shopping, I don’t mean the drudge of the weekly supermarket stock-up, nor do I mean popping round the corner for a packet of biscuits. What I mean is shopping as a leisure pursuit, commonly referred to around these parts as “going to town”.

When I was a child, my grandmother lived with us. As Mum and Dad both worked, Nanna was often in charge of me. Nanna liked to “go to town”. Nanna’s version of going to town invariably involved traipsing for hours around the market – in days of old this would be Nottingham’s Central Market (a place no longer in existence since the early 1970s) and later Victoria Centre’s indoor market, which replaced it.

Nottingham Central Market in the 1950s

Nanna, having been born in Yorkshire in 1897, felt more at home in markets than in shops. Unfortunately, market stalls are not, to a young child, a form of entertainment. Mainly because when you are little, you can’t actually see high enough to peruse their wares properly. So I did not relish my trips to town with Nanna.

My parents did not indulge in “going to town”. The phrase itself was particularly apt as far as they were concerned, meaning something that was a bit over the top and not, therefore, to be recommended. It had a similar resonance to the term my Mum always used when my Dad had got carried away and bought too much of something, which she invariably referred to as “going a bit wholesale”. This was usually expressed with a somewhat weary intonation.

Anyway, I remember only ONE solitary occasion in my entire childhood when we went as a family to town, to shop for pleasure. I think my Dad must have got a promotion or something, because we all got bought something – and I think we may even have been treated to lunch “out”, which was perhaps even rarer than my Dad going to the shops (at least, any shops not selling motoring accessories, second-hand books or hi-fi equipment, for which he made an exception).

So it wasn’t until my teens, when my parents considered me old enough to go to town on my own on the bus, that I got into shopping. And even then I didn’t usually have any money, although I did enjoy a wander around the fashion shops and a bit of a trying-on session now and again.

Times have changed of course, and people generally have more disposable income than they did when I was a child. Nowadays shopping and going to town is what most people seem to do, most of the time, just for fun. I went through a phase when I worked in the city centre of being able to get a fix of town shopping every lunch break, if I wanted to. I still like to shop in new places – we’ve done trips to Bristol and Manchester recently, where discovering new shops and browsing new stuff was definitely a pleasure, even though I didn’t actually buy very much.

But generally my family’s shopping habits seem to be quite deeply ingrained. I am now a person who both likes markets and who does not generally, of a weekend, “go to town” for pleasure. When I do, I usually find my tolerance of the experience to be significantly lower than I think it will be.

This weekend I had no choice but to go to town, because our lad needed something to wear to his prom. Proms are something of an alien concept to me, mainly making me think of the film Carrie, or that bit in one of the Harry Potter movies. I could have postponed the trip a little longer as said prom is not until July. But knowing how tricky it is to find stuff in his size and fearing leaving it too late, I thought we had better just get it over with, as I didn’t want him to end up being the Ron Weasley of the event. (If you haven’t seen the movie, click on the Ron Weasley link to see what I mean by that!)

Luckily we got him fixed up relatively easily and quickly. Which left me with some time on my own, to shop.

Having not got much cash to splash (and having splashed most of what I did have on a cheap prom suit), I headed for my favourite city centre charity shop, Sue Ryder. Which happened to be having a one-day-only “everything’s a pound” sale round the back! Talk about good timing!

There were treasures galore… I was sorely tempted by a wonky-eyed vintage teddy bear – but possessing several of those already I just alerted the woman in charge to display him somewhere prominent, so that he could find a new home. A large, handmade model of the Tower of London in a homemade perspex and wood case also caught my eye, but I wasn’t sure how I’d get it home on the bus, or indeed what I would do with it once I got it there.

I did come home with a new outfit though – a vintage red jumper and skirt. For a pound each!

And a prop for my stall – an old toy tin drum (also just one pound – previously on sale for ten!) which will become a display stand for some circus-themed dolls I’m hoping to have time to make for the upcoming Secret Garden Craft Fair.I’ve been working on a series of circus dolls for a commission.

Here are the first two: vintage-styled circus girls, aerial hoop artistes in all their finery…But better even than the soon-to-be-display-stand drum (and also kind of circus-themed) is this…I always wanted a toy caravan like this when I was a child. I used to see them in people’s houses sometimes, outsized ornaments pulled by pottery horses. My parents thought all ornaments “dust traps” and would never have contemplated giving such a thing house room, so my yearnings came to naught.

Until now, that is.

I don’t mind about the missing horse, although I do hope it is enjoying its freedom and not missing it’s wagon. Perhaps I could fashion a fabric replacement. I can just imagine those two circus girls drinking whisky and giggling in there after the show.

For me it is a thing of beauty – or at least, of satisfying quirk, which is more or less the same thing in my eyes.

All the more lovely for having been found for a pound and – even if my parents wouldn’t have approved – more than worth going to town for. ♥