Wednesday 8 September - being an RGU

Today my travels were limited by work, meetings, the promise of rain and a general lack of concentration on my part. I had various shopping tasks to be completed and so I returned to normal life. Gone was wondering about and watching. I had things to do and so was concentrating on those and less on what was happening around me. I thought about doing a Regency London walk (and had appropriate A-Z) but this was post-rationalisation because I had to go to Oxford Street.

Much of the west end was built in Regency times. By then the fields and gardens are built on although there is still space. London is much bigger and more crowded and the maps change to reflect this. There are no little pictures of cows or people going about their work. This was the beginning of the Enlightenment - reason was what mattered and the maps of this time are very rational and orderly. It is all about the buildings and less about the people. There are squares and crescents and wide streets.

There doesn't seem to be much rationality about Oxford Street. It is full of people and buses queuing along its length. There is little to remind you that this is the road to Oxford. This is the highway of consumption. Today I am part of this world, I am shopping. I am fulfilling my role as a Revenue Generating Unit. I am helping the economy. I've found in earlier travels around the country that there are few spaces where you can be without spending money. Walking is very good, keeps you occupied and is free. But less fun on a wet day. Libraries are the other option, but there is growing pressure to close them down (or put them in supermarkets or some such thing).

But pretty much everywhere expects you to buy something, or at least pretend to buy something. Like walking you can wander around for nothing, but if you want to sit down you need to be spending money. You can buy a coffee but are only allowed to eat things you have bought in that shop. I understand the pressures but I'm a coeliac and in many places, they have nothing I am allowed to eat, but still they refuse to let me eat something I haven't bought there. On wet days I am often reduced to eating my sandwich at a bus stop. (Libraries don't like you eating there either). When you go home each evening you don't really notice the pressure to be a revenue generating unit. But when I am doing long distance travels and am away for weeks at a time and staying somewhere different every evening, it becomes very apparent.

Not that I have anything against shopping. Go to a town where many of the shops are boarded up and everything else is struggling to survive but it does sometimes seem that the balance is not ideal. Shopping (and being a revenue generating unit) is fine if you are in work and have money to spare. But where do you go if you are retired and bored. No time for a nice chat in the post office (the queue will be out of the door). Supermarkets are switching to self service along with the banks - and everything designed for efficiency and no chatting. The shops want (and need) us to spend and shopping provides a sort of 'sociability lite' - social engagement but no commitment. You can control the process and spend as much time or as little time as you like. If you want to buy there will (probably) be people to help you, to chat, to find what you are looking for, to make suggestions. But there is no commitment on your part, they will listen to you (but you don't have to listen to them unless you want to).

When I go to rural areas, there is much less shopping and much more chatting. I still can't work out whether this is a sign of nothing else to do, or whether when there are shops people are working longer hours to keep them open and so have less time to get involved in other things. But today this seems a world away. I am on Oxford Street, I am happy to be an RGU for a few hours and am struck by the difference between trying to engage people in conversation (to ask them their wishes) and the shop assistants trying to engage me in conversation to encourage me to buy.