“Who has time to fill up soap dispensers?”
I browse happily in Bathroom Accessories, but after 10 minutes of fondling posh soaps and towels, I’m feeling that it’s all a bit Vogue and aspirational. I wonder aloud, “I mean who has time to fill up soap dispensers?” Though this question is wholly rhetorical, my friend answers it. “Perhaps,” she says, “if you lopped off a couple of those hours that you spend watching Frasier re-runs in bed, you might.”
I sense I might be stretching the limits of her patience with soap.
“Shall we look in Kitchens?” I say.
“Yeah,” she says.
I’m following her while she scrutinises utensil after utensil, when suddenly she turns and swings what appears to be a weird metal rolling-pin backwards and forwards, two inches from my face.
“I can’t believe it,” she says, eyes blazing with desire, “look! Look how stylish. Look how heavy. Feel it. No. I mean it. Just feel it.” She swings the rolling pin up and down from elbow to chin, in the manner of a slightly mad and gleeful weight-lifter.
Obligingly I take the rolling pin and swing it in the same manner.
“Very nice,” I say. “What’s it for?”
“Oh for God’s sake,” she says, jabbing a finger at it, “it’s a garlic crusher. This end is for smashing the garlic head into cloves and this bit — oh my God, look at that heavy serration — is for crushing. This handle — oh my God look how sleek it is — is made of a special metal that absorbs odours.”
I swing some more. “Lovely.”
“No, seriously,” she says, “I don’t think you understand. With this, you don’t have to wash your hands — you just rub your hands on the special metal handle and bingo! No garlicky smell.”
Bingo. My patience is officially exhausted.
“What’s wrong with just washing your hands?” I say.
As she walks to the sales desk with the garlic crusher, I consider the business of Socially Synergetic Browsing — that mutually enjoyable activity which is only pleasant because both parties:
A. Agree with the universally recognised definition of browsing, which is: the desultory, wandering examination of items, without any definite objective or planned search strategy, that may or may not lead to discussion, closer scrutiny or acquisition of items.
B. Find their interest is excited by the same items, but on the odd occasion when it’s not, exercise patience in a manner that is not lemon-lipped and therefore good for team morale.
C. Find their Browsing Cut-Off points synchronise naturally but manage small glitches in synchronicity by going for a coffee and/or having a lie down back at the hotel.
When my husband first suggested that we take a city break together in Amsterdam, I had grave concerns surrounding a, b and c.
It’s easy to buy into the ‘men hate shopping’ theory. However, it’s infinitely easier to buy into the story that men hate shopping when you’re married to a man whose Browsing Cut-Off Point is immutably fixed at four minutes.
“That would be lovely,” I said when he mentioned the weekend in Amsterdam, “but I should mention that if we go, I’d like to browse around without forethought, plans, time restrictions or map, in and out of randomly-chosen shops that sell things such as candelabra, strange lamp-shade bases or mirrors with little gold cherubs on.”
“Oh,” he said.
“And I want to visit a gay café in Heinekenplein — where all the cakes are decorated with tiny plastic dolls.”
“Oh,” he said.
“And I want to look for boots.”
Silence fell; a moment of stillness in which the same memory dislodged itself in both our brains; a very old image of an embarrassing debacle in a shoe shop that sprung with mind-boggling velocity and passion from the terse question (his): “Do you really need another pair of boots?” and a terser response (mine): “Always.”
“I think you should go with V,” he said.
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