Well, I’m writing this on a train at Waterloo, waiting for the pull-away homewards after a long day in London; the afternoon has been filled with a rather exciting customer gig that involved 90 minutes travel to the office, 30 minutes of e-mail, 2 hours of meeting and 2 hours of debrief and planning – and I am not even home yet, which will be another hour or so.

Thus it was finding myself in London at 6PM with a train trip to which to look forwards, I decided to go shopping – or, rather, window-shopping – instead.

Lance and I caught the Central Line, and I bailed out at Bond St to look at fountain pens at Selfridges; this was both good and bad in that they had a wide selection, but the minimum-wage, poor language skills, and (much worse) poor grasp of the product pre-Christmas staff must have been onboard:

me: (indicating a wide selection of Pelikan Pens) “Could you tell me about these, please?”

him: (blank look) “They are pens.”

me: (thinks: “ok, so, let’s start simple”) “Well, perhaps for a start you could tell me what they are made of?”

him: “They, are all made, of… plastic!”

Which in a cosmic, antimaterialistic sense may well be true – actually the materials vary and are mostly forms of resin – but this is hardly the way to sell pens of value up to £1500 or more. His colleague was marginally better informed, telling me that the price differences between the 325-quid pens vs: the 275-quid ones related to the 18ct vs: 14ct nibs with which they were sold… which is only part of the story.

In short it seems that after a couple of evenings trawling websites and kilobytes of friends’ advice, I am rather better informed than the shop’s staff. Oh well.

I refrained from buying anything but managed to confirm my worst fears that the one which felt most comfortable and “right” in my big hands was – indeed – the £325 one; I think I shall continue windowshopping for some time, and if they take my fancy drop into the Pelikan factory shop in Hannover when on motorbike holiday next year.

I utterly failed to find the Selfridges branch of Yo Sushi and instead decided to grab a bite to eat at the Salt Beef sandwich bar, which appears also to double up as an entirely other sort of meat-rack for any persuasion. The people-watching is superb, and the food’s not bad, either. Get the “small” sandwich; it’s more than adequate.

I escaped and walked up Oxford Street to Marble Arch before U-turning for no particular reason, and re-walked prettymuch the entire length of Oxford Street, back to Tottenham Court Road tube.

Pre-Christmas-Shoppers abounded; not quite heaving yet, but certainly rather busy. As you sidestep gaggles of teenagers who gabble into their mobiles, forceful progress seems to be the order of the evening – Highland Terriers are yanked and jerked as they dogfully attempt to sniff every passing wastebin whilst their owners make progress, and twenty- or thirty-something men glance briefly, wistfully and perhaps ruefully into the windows of La Senza, as their spouses likewise drag them past.

(Incidentally: given that the latter have someone who looks not entirely unlike Roisin Murphy modeling for them at the moment, I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising – although most people seem to overtly – indeed pointedly – fail to even glance into the windows of the Oxford St branches of Ann Summers or Harmony. Britain may have become much more open-minded in the past 20 years, but my, don’t the neuroses kinda linger?)

The Pen Store in Debenhams is bijou, and packed with customers, mostly women. They have a much smaller display than Selfridges, more dense, and with less brand-variety. An Asian guy spent a minute or two “testing” an upper-class biro by writing a paragraph of Arabic on the sampler pad, before sauntering off with a pal and a snigger.

I nicked the sheet…

…so, does anyone fancy translating?

Dive once more into the crowds, and hack your way east; I stuck my head inside Virgin Megastore to see what DVDs were on offer, and re-emerging into the street I glanced in passing at a man who proceeded to nod at me most vigorously, standing next to his female partner.

Thinks: “What the hell was that all about?”

Thence into the Tube station, down the stairs, find a gap on the standing-half of the “down” escalator, to watch the people on the “up” side coming past.

Platform 3 for the Northern Line, along comes a train, embark and sit.

A stop or so later, an attractive, young, and apparently German woman – the one traveling with a somewhat older but similarly attractive woman who may well be her mother, the one who in the corner of my vision has been flipping through her phone’s text messages for a minute or two and talking animatedly to her companion – swings round to me and in slightly accented perfect English asks:

her: Excuse me, do you speak German?

me: Er, sorry, no I don’t.

her: Oh dear. Sorry. Thank you so much.

…and turns back to her mother, her phone, and her German text-message.

When we get to Waterloo I depart, wish them a good evening, and receive a cheery Auf Wiedersehn! in return.

Thinks: “What the hell was that all about? Again?”

And now, I’m home. Time for beer.