Nixta Sinks

I thought that Selfridges was supposed to be a respectable department store for us plebs. A cut above the John Lewises, themselves a cut above the Debenhams and such crap. Of course, I've not been in the country a long time so I don't know what the current hierarchy is, but there always was one when I was growing up and I assume there still is one.

Well, Selfridges suck. A few weeks back I bought the following:

• One Nike shirt for the gym.


• One yoga exercise ball.


• One stupid bar thing for pull-ups.


• One pump for the yoga ball.

The yoga ball is huuuuuge. Much bigger than the one on display. But that's ultimately my fault for not spending the 2 minutes it takes to find the fucking measurement on the side of the box (in subsequent tests involving both myself and store staff at numerous stores and covering various makes and models of exercise ball, it has been conclusively proven that 2 minutes is the shortest average time it can take to find the size of the ball on the box - the best time ever being 1:52.34 seconds).

The stupid bar thing is entirely my fault (genuinely, this time) because I didn't realise you actually had to screw it in. I'm always mindlessly optimistic about these bloody bars and always hope to find one that wedges itself into a doorframe. Of course, for it to exert enough pressure to hold up my lumbering frame it would most likely crush any wooden doorframe noticeably and I'm a complete moron for even falling for the old gag again.

The shirt has been fantastic.

The pump proved entirely useless. They told me that they were out of yoga-ball pumps, but that any football pump would do and I could pop back over to the Nike section just behind them and see if they had one. Indeed they did, and happy with my selections I paid for them all and made my way out. It was only when I got home that I realised that they had been lying to me at the yoga ball counter. Fucking hippies.

I blew it up by mouth and nearly had a stroke. In the end, the kindly Dr. R. lent me the pump that came with a far more sensibly sized ball he had bought his GF for Christmas, and that turned the ball from a wobbly orally-inflated doughnut-shaped deathtrap to a somewhat more manageable nearly-rigid sphere. It's still huge though, and I still need a smaller one.

Then, as if Selfridges shoddy staffing ("selling the Selfridges way"! Ha!) to that point hadn't been enough, I stopped on the way out to buy some sun-glasses (in green, not the black shown). Those fat chav morons behind the till had put the sticky price-tag on the soft front part of the arm, which when removed stripped the colouring from the arm with it. But like my mum says, you can't see it from an aeroplane. Then again, nor can you see that my shoes have leather soles and are Italian, but she insists that they must be (though for a year now I've duped her with a pair of Next's finest)... I should there and then have engaged in firm contact between said shoes and aforementioned chav derrières followed immediately by a rapid succession of applications of leather soles to Selfridges floor in the general direction of the exit, but of course I merely paid for the glasses and left calmly only to be accosted by angry bunnyhuggers on the way out demanding that I take back my never-been-near-an-animal purchases because Selfridges burn baby rabbits in their basements for fun, or something. It was something about rabbits. Or cats. I don't recall.

It's just exasperating that apparently nothing can be done in any way properly these days. It makes me feel old, grumpy, decrepit and out of touch. Then again, that's something I suppose I've striven for over a long period so I shouldn't really be complaining. Oh, the sense of entitlement I feel after 8.5 years in the US and a privileged childhood in a tweed suit!