Shopping

What with the security of a week's residence in one place, and the illusory freedom of newly-issued bank cards, I've been able over the last couple of days to buy a few little things I've needed. Or, at least, I've been able to try.

Yesterday, I spent hours with Lauren trying to find a shop that would sell me a needle and thread. It was difficult, because the Impromptu Sign Language for sewing is easily confused with that for a number of other things. Getting halfway there (a needle) seemed a good place to celebrate and stop. So we did.

Along the way, I wandered through a few Slovakian chain clothing stores, which seem nicer, and cheaper, than New Zealand ones. For you style fanatics out there, the big thing in European fashion this autumn is black-and-white print.

This morning, I bought a cable for my laptop that plugs it into European wall sockets. The shop guy was friendly, he knew the word "notebook" (of course, as I've mentioned previously, so does everyone), and he was fairly certain that the cable I was pointing at was almost but not exactly the sort that would fit my computer's orifices without destroying it. Fortunately, the cable was in fact exactly and not almost what I wanted, and fortunately, I was strong-minded enough to buy it against his advice.

This afternoon, out walking with Eyal and Lauren, I bought shampoo from the supermarket. At the checkout just before me was a very old man, exceptionally small and thin. "As if he'd spent a decade in malnourishment," I mused for a moment -- then saw his shopping basket, which contained bread rolls and a pickle jar and perhaps a dozen bars of chocolate.