The Exquisite Loneliness Of The Retail Park Shopping ~ An Out Of Town Religious Retreat.

They are considered by many to be one of the most crass products of imported American culture, but I love the romance of a retail parks. There is something safe and secure about them, you’re neither here nor there, neither in reality nor out, like at the beach. I made a film about ‘marginal gardening’ in a BBC series once and they remind me of that feeling of being on the inch-wide perimeter of the page of life, where the controlled and cultivated reaches the edges of civilisation and teeters on wilderness - a bit like me. They are a short stay sanctuary conveniently located just far enough away to enjoy the getaway drive to escape your circumstances, but comfortably close enough to get safely back home at night.

I remember the inception of the first Retail Parks in England and there was an instant outcry of disdain by some who justifiably predicted the death of the high street, but mostly by people who openly or secretly consider themselves to be too cosmopolitan for the vulgar experience of ex-industrial estate shopping. I am in a painful position of authority to inform those folks that farmers markets are not the cultural antidote to retails parks. Unlike at the RP, you can’t disengage from all forms of hostile communication, confrontation and pollution, nor attain an instant serenity level of Grand Master in the 45 minute queue in front of a burger-van-cum-gourmet-food-truck every Saturday morning. 

Often, when I’d finished work at the worlds biggest pseudo farmers market in the centre of London, where I owned a business, I’d get in my van, after a week of fighting aggressive traders or drunk punters and I’d drive straight past home to my nearest Retail Park to decompress in a serene environment where no one was screaming, hawking, asking inane questions, threatening/committing violence or blocking you in or out of the carpark for no other reason but spite or raging misogyny. The irony tasted bitter sweet. 

I lived for the drive away from that ranting burning open ‘mouth full of food’ hell. Every Saturday, by 5 o’clock it would be over and once I managed to detach the men who’d stand defiantly in the road to stop you leaving, or teach you a lesson, or whatever festering hate they were enjoying, once I got away and turned left under Tower Bridge I would start to feel the excitement of my Retail Park Detox Therapy Session cleanse ahead of me. My elbows would tighten with delight against my sides when I sailed straight past my junction home and headed onto the A13 towards Beckton. 

The joy of taking the exit and embarking on the descent from the slip road was often all I needed to feel the benefit, but being able to just drive in there and pull up into any space I wanted, without the worry of being ticketed, towed or tagged, was the cherry on the cake. It made me feel wanted.

After I’d done a few wheelie twirls and picked my bay, I’d climb down from my van like Boadicea dismounting her warhorse, battle weary, dirty and bruised, slamming the door on the abuse of the week. Stepping into the serenity of the perfectly air conditioned temperature controlled uniformity was like being handed a long cool cocktail of Valium by a cream linen-suited David Niven in a Bamboo lounge far away in time. 

Taxi for The King Of The Retail Park please.

Beckon was my go to bamboo spa after a long Saturday, it was built on a sewage refinery and the smell of fermented human waste was omnipresent. However, my all time Holyland was Lakeside. You could elevate yourself out of reality for a whole day at Lakeside, seriously, a whole 12 hours plus the travel time, which was an event in itself. A glorious journey past Dagenham Ford and it’s spectacular industrial expanse. Accumulatively, over 20 years, Lakeside delivered weeks of transcendental detachment and hundreds of life changing outfits. My perfect pilgrimage would start by leaving home early in the morning, arriving in the sprawling Essex Mecca with the luxury of having ten spiritual shopping hours ahead of me. Leaving loaded with fashion snacks, weird objects, a celebratory diet coke from the drive thru and cloaked in the thrill of night illuminated by orange street lights against a clear black sky, would give me tingles of optimism for the future magical places and bamboo lounges I could wear my new outfits and decorate my exotic home.

Are we home?

I don’t live there anymore, but I will still squeeze my elbows when I unexpectedly drive passed one. They’ll always be my safe lay-by to pull off the motorway of existence and satisfy my Wordsworthian need for solitude, when you don’t have the luxury of being free to wander lonely as a cloud due to the real and constant present danger of being raped and or murdered o’er any vale or hill. A place to go if you’re lonely. A place to go if you’re over-crowded. Clicking through miles of aisles of coat hangers is my meditative rhythmic equivalent of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Apart from Beckton, retail parks in the dark always smell as intoxicating as the exquisite inch of air clinging to a cat’s coat like a Ready Brek glow of scent when it comes home in the night. Delicious.