{"id":1333,"date":"2005-12-20T21:11:24","date_gmt":"2005-12-20T21:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2005\/12\/shopping_on_oxf\/"},"modified":"2005-12-20T21:11:24","modified_gmt":"2005-12-20T21:11:24","slug":"shopping_on_oxf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/shopping_on_oxf\/","title":{"rendered":"Shopping on Oxford Street"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most stupid things you can do at this time of year is go shopping on Oxford Street. I mean, why would you decide, at this time of year, to go out into the heaving throngs to go shopping in the run-up to Christmas?<br \/>\nHere are some random thoughts &#8211; good and bad &#8211; that come from a couple of recent excursions in pursuit of Christmas gifts&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Visit London won&#8217;t thank me, but there are far too many tourists<\/li>\n<li>since when have the Salvation Army started playing Careless Whisper by Wham?<\/li>\n<li>why would someone in Pret A Manger, on spotting a single long queue separating out into each till as a place becomes available, think that he could just walk to the front?<\/li>\n<li>does anyone ever go into the Gizmondo shop?<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Sinners &#038; Winners&#8221; guy has a new PA &#8211; not a <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/4540262.stm\">megaphone<\/a> any longer<\/li>\n<li>I wouldn&#8217;t want to work on the Evening Standard pitch near &#8220;Sinners &#038; Winners&#8221; guy<\/li>\n<li>Argos is a complete bunfight at the collection point<\/li>\n<li>why does anyone buy any of the tat that&#8217;s sold as gadgets in clothes shops, eg shower radios from Next?<\/li>\n<li>none of the clothes shops had the gadget I was after, and I did look<\/li>\n<li><em>all<\/em> those gadgets will be available at half price in less than seven days&#8217; time<\/li>\n<li>as you go higher and higher into Hamleys, the queues to pay for your stuff get shorter and shorter<\/li>\n<li>wrapping paper is called &#8220;gift wrap&#8221; everywhere<\/li>\n<li>several people a day must get killed literally walking in front of buses &#8211; does everyone know that Oxford Street isn&#8217;t actually pedestrianised?<\/li>\n<li>no matter how busy it gets in the run up before Christmas, there&#8217;ll <em>still<\/em> be sales assistants ready to pounce as you enter, far too eager to grab you in mobile phone shops<\/li>\n<li>lots of sales have already started<\/li>\n<li>the sales start early <em>every<\/em> year<\/li>\n<li>those dodgy &#8220;auction&#8221; shops have reappeared after a long absence<\/li>\n<li>the Apple Store is a no-go zone with queues stretching nearly to the door<\/li>\n<li>the same stuff is available for the same price with far shorter queues in John Lewis<\/li>\n<li>I was stupid enough to leave my shopping until this week, so I deserve everything I get<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most stupid things you can do at this time of year is go shopping on Oxford Street. I mean, why would you decide, at this time of year, to go out into the heaving throngs to go shopping in the run-up to Christmas? Here are some random thoughts &#8211; good and bad [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}