Why we’re slaves to the shopping mall

How did shopping become a generation’s leisure activity of choice? Dave Kenny spends a day at Dundrum Town Centre — and gets to the bottom of the cult of the mall.

IT’S TWO in the afternoon and I am on a shopping safari. Yummy Mummies are drifting gracefully across the Dundrum plain. Some graze at the perfumery counter in House of Fraser, others linger at cappuccino-filled watering holes. They push their young before them, with perfectly manicured claws.

Behind them, like a retinue, bored husbands keep a respectful distance, gazing disinterestedly ahead and scratching themselves. A small group of them herd together at a shoe shop window, temporarily emasculated.