Sports shop of Terror

I had to buy a cricket top yesterday, so I could go to a party and pretend to be from the 1920s. My first, foolish, thought was to scour charity shops around Wakefield for some discarded sportswear, perhaps donated by a cricketer who had got fed up of the whole pointless exercise.




Charity shops are peculiar beasts. They excite me a little, as they are like little museums of the modern age. Here are the stripey shirts and oversized hats of a  generation that realised they looked like dicks; the unloved books and outgrown toys that chronicle the end of childhood and the beginning of cold, cynical adult life.

I note that the shops cater predominantly for women. The colourful wonders that await female shoppers create a bewildering labyrinth of potential outfits - extraordinary hats, blouses, skirts, dresses and shoes, in infinite variety. Men get a couple of racks of shirts and the occasional suit that probably came off a dead man. Not for the first time in my life, I wished I might be a girl, if only for a while.

Whatever cricketers do with their cast offs, it doesn't appear to be 'donate them to charity'. Maybe they hand them down to their offspring, sealing the sport into a sort of self-perpetuating dynasty. Maybe that's why the rules are so incomprehensible - to keep out the 'not we'.

So I found no cricket top, thoguh I did get a rather nice stripey shirt and a spiffing hat. The only option was to go to an actual sports shop.

It would be something of an understatement to say that the sports shop is not my natural habitat. In fact, even finding one was quite a trick. I have trained my brain to edit from the universe all phenomena assocated with the concept of 'sport'. I hate sport in all its manifestations, and try to ignore it as hard as I can. So I had no idea where any sports shops might be found, or what they might look like, or indeed whether the notion of 'a sports shop' was even something that existed. What if everyone got their equipment from their dads?

Luckily, Caroline is much more open minded and is able to conceive of ideas beyond the acquisition of DVDs and Doctor Who toys. She knew that yes, sports shops did exist, and even better knew where to find one. She wouldn't come in with me, though. I had to do this next bit alone.

Reader, words cannot describe how out of place I felt in this cavernous warehouse of sporting goods. I wandered timidly through rows of football shirts, tennis rackets, swimwear and trainers, convinced that at any minute an alarm would go off. Intruder! There - next to the lycra basketball tops! It's that guy who was crap at football at school, and used to go hide in an old warehouse rather than do PE! (This is true - the fear of paedophile tramps and/or Freddie Kruger was as nothing compared to my fear of failing to catch a cricket ball and being laughed at, so I used to bunk off every Tuesday afternoon. If you're reading this, Mr Wright, that's where I was - in a warehouse. Oh, and we all think Miss Rush fancies you. But then we all also think you're gay, for no real reason).



Where was I? Oh yes, creeping nervously through the cathedral of sport. I didn't even know where the cricket tops might be. There was a big section for cricket bats, and balls, and those big things you strap to  your legs to stop them breaking when your opponents hurl insanely fast, hard missiles at them. But no tops. Did that mean there weren't any? Or would they be in a different section? Help!

Except, of course, I couldn't ask for help. If I did, the person I asked would probably assume I was a cricketer, and start throwing cricket balls at me, and I wouldn't be able to catch them and everyone would point and laugh and that includes the girls and I would go all red and that would make them laugh more and I would have no friends and I would go home and cry and then I would read Battle Action Force comic and imagine what is would be like if I had a jet pack and a flame thrower and I was chasing them across the playground and they were on fire and screaming and then we'd see who was a puff!

Sorry.

So, you see my problem. My other worry was that, having walked round the entire shop three times staring at every single thing in case it was a cricket top in disguise, I was starting to look suspicious and people might think I was there to abduct children or something. So I left, defeated by a combination of unresolved childhood angst, poor spatial awareness and bad store planning on the part of the shop's floor manager.

Caroline came into a different store with me and found a top instantly and with great ease. This is why she is in charge.