Oh, please let it be true. Please.

Postmaterialism? Bring it on. Maybe it has something to do with lacking spare cash for the past two years, but I'm less and less interested in shopping* (not that I was ever that dedicated); I trooped through a few sales yesterday for the form of the thing (well, I could use new shoes, and it would be nice to find that perfect party dress) but truth be told, it was more of a relief than otherwise to find nothing interesting.

And I too find myself rubbing hands in secret glee when reading of the travails of estate agents and high street stores. Housing is ridiculously overpriced, and there is just way too much crap on sale. It staggered me when I first arrived in London; I tried to explain to a friend in SA just how much stuff there was available, and she was deeply puzzled. Why would you want stuff you don't need, she asked. Exactly so. While it's quite fun to be able to choose from, let's say, 30 different pepper grinders (a semi-conservative guess as to the number I might find on a trawl through John Lewis, Habitat, Ikea etc), do we really need that much choice? To say nothing of the tatty end of the market - the overwhelming amount of novelty goods and cheap 'fashion' available on the wrong end of Oxford Street is unutterably depressing. If you don't think so, imagine the human energy that goes into dreaming up, manufacturing, packing and selling these ugly disposable products. Not to mention the natural and economic resources. Surely there's a better use for all that. Just because we have money, here in the practically-full-employment UK, doesn't mean it makes sense for the 'invisible hand' to push all the country's (world's?) resources into yet more stuff to sell to people without any real needs.

I despair of economics.

And while we're on the subject. Gift shops. I have never understood gift shops. A whole shop devoted to 'gifts'. If there isn't any better way of classifying their products, it leads me to suspect that what it really sells is stuff that nobody would actually want to buy for themselves, but that will do at a push for stuffing giftwrap. And who would want to receive something like that? Is there anything more depressing than a gift shop?

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*not quite the same as being uninterested in stuff, I must confess. Still loving my shiny new office toy. And o'course there's nothing like the thrill of a large bag of lusciously coloured, soft textured yarns. And clothes, oh yes, I love new clothes. Hate shopping for them though. But I can't quite claim to be a fully converted postmaterialist. Sadly.