Cherub and I went Christmas shopping yesterday. Clearly, we picked the right day ... unlike my friend Dorothy who went to the same shopping mall on Tuesday and managed to get tangled up with an armed robbery. Oops.
The odd thing - apart from hearing gunshots in North Buckinghamshire on a December Tuesday, that is - was the reaction of the shoppers to the sound of shooting. They either went towards the incident to see what was going on, or simply carried on shopping (while diving for their mobile phones, presumably to provide a running commentary to their nearest and dearest) ...
The newspaper reports people running and screaming. This is SO not true that I wondered if the reporter had felt they HAD to write that just to make the story more exciting? No one ran. No one screamed. Most people just went on shopping. Even when BHS drew down their metal shutters, people were knocking politely on them trying to get in to buy their mum some slippers for Christmas.She wonders "British reaction in the face of threat - sanguine unflappability or complacent stupidity?" What do you think? As it turned out, they were firing blanks, though that wasn't apparent at the time.
As for me, I'm fairly certain that I would have carried on shopping, due to a combination of slow reaction time, appalling lack of observation skills, and a dash of stupidity. By the time I worked out what was going on, it would have been long over.
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5 comments:
I love that last paragraph, so funny.
As a friend of mine, who is a clinical psychologist, said to me recently, 'There's a lot to be said for denial.'
Just love the idea of doughty British shoppers undaunted in their quest for cosy slippers...
Glad you are ok!
Oh, my. So the cliche is true? I thought it was a bit exaggerated ... but apparently ... not?
Oy.
Stiff upper lips chaps, don't let the enemy see any fear.
I'm sorry you're friend got caught up in it though, must have been scary.
I'll bet there were quite a few people trying to update their facebook statuses in the midst of it all.
lol I really did mean 'your' there not 'you're'. Chuh and I was just moaning about this particular grammatical error...hoist by my own petard.
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