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A shopping
trip into Leeds for me is a real treat.
Living in rural Spain means that any half decent shopping spree needs a
45 minute drive up to the city of Tarragona, and even then I have to say it’s
got nothing on the diversity and stalwart favourites of the high streets of
good old Inglaterra.
One of the
best things about shopping in Leeds is people watching.
It starts on the train usually with me tutting about how much make-up young
girls wear these days—we were always taught to match your foundation to your
skin tone, still at least a few seem to get just the right amount of fake tan,
probably by going to a tanning shop—to listening to the random conversations
between fellow commuters. Something that
I guess you switch off from when you’re used to it or maybe it’s just pleasing
to my ear to actually understand all of what I’m hearing?
Once off the
train, the heady mixture of students, goths, punks, hippies that are probably
into reiki treatment, posh people, chavs, old and young is
a feast for the eyes. Everyone looks so
very different.
One of the
most bizarre things about getting out and about back in England is remembering
that I can speak my own mother tongue. I
can go into a shop and actually have a conversation that rolls off the tongue,
without having to first translate it in my head and then the whole thing coming
out a garbled mixture of Catalan, Spanish and English. Maybe I’ve been away too long, because I must
have said “gracies” at least three times and “perdona” twice after bumping into
someone.
I found
myself randomly chatting to someone about the height of the heels on the shoes
they were thinking about purchasing, not something I would have done before. I
would have just been head down, go about your own business, no small talk.
The saddest
part of it all though was realising that I no longer know that many people in
Leeds. Eight years ago in my previous
life as a stock controller in pubs, I could have walked into a number of pubs,
sat and had a chat (and a glass of wine) with the manager or staff, or maybe
even just bumped into someone I knew whilst shopping. Being an expat robs you of that, over time
you lose contact with friends and old colleagues and your world becomes so much
smaller.
