Post utopian retail

I woke up earlier than usual, posted today's link to Morning Prayer and said the office in bed for a change before breakfast. Before starting work on a biblical reflection and the service for next week's prayer video, I finished another Patricia Cornwell crimmie I've been reading in recent days. For my taste her stories feel over detailed and long with phrases and images repeated without moving the story forward or  leaving any space for the imagination. Worse, however is the absence of punctuation in her sentence structure making it hard sometimes to catch the actual rhythm within her story-telling. With dozens of hit best sellers behind her, perhaps publishing editors are reluctant to call her to task for this.  I don't understand why. 

After a cooking a veggie pasta dish for lunch, I decided to walk to Las Lagunas and explore what El Corte Ingles has done with their vast building, now that several floors of it are closed, and the ground floor has become a 'designer outlet' discount clothes store. I hate that word 'outlet'. In my book it belongs to a large enclosed channel for water borne sewage off shore. I wonder if marketing and PR gurus ever thought of this, or do the live in such a rarified atmosphere that it didn't occur to them? Fuengirola now has several small tiendas de ropa which are also selling discount branded fashions left over from previous years. 

I walked the length and breadth of El Corte Ingles' mega-outlet without seeing anything I'd want to wear. It's all very smart and makes good use of a big and spacious environment. All I wanted to buy was a tee shirt or a vest however. It's not exactly a dystopian environment, but definitely a post utopian product of the pandemic when scaling business down in the absence of mass tourism was vital for survival.

When I went down to the basement to inspect the hypermarket however, I was pleased to discover that as well as food and drink, it also stocks the same range of digital devices as the store in Malaga, and a section with bed linen, bed clothes and underwear, so I was able to buy a pack two of vests, which made my visit worthwhile. This underground section is so huge and confusingly laid out, that returning to the exit was a bit like getting out of a maze for a first time visitor. 

While I was surfacing from the maze, Owain rang me with a query about a file sent to his conveyancing solicitors, and then told me that progress on putting forward the deposit money and closing the purchase is now immanent. After consultation with Clare, we agreed she would transfer the deposit money from our joint account when she visits the bank in person tomorrow. Neither of us are entirely comfortable with the idea of transferring a large sum of savings via internet banking, even if it's as secure as we trust it really is. Our age, I suppose.

I returned to the house, had tea and chatted with Clare before listening to 'The Archers'. Then I recorded and edited next week's Morning Prayer and Reflection audio, before turning in for the night.