Men behaving badly.

Woodbury Common

After a hectic day in New York City, today is a change of pace and a retail therapy day for some at a massive retail outlet centre at Woodbury Common, which is an hours coach ride outside the City, with over 350 outlets, heaven or hell depending on your attitude to retail therapy. For my part the ride out through the Lincoln Tunnel and back via the George Washington bridge and the suburbs and names you have heard like Hackensack and Paramus. The first thing that struck me was the rain, just like being home in the UK on a wet cold Monday morning rush hour, but this was six to eight lanes wide interspersed with flashing lights, police cars, ambulances the odd fire engine and the wail of sirens and horns, all the American TV series you watch on TV at home. Another thing that surprised me was how quickly the Skyscrapers disappeared and green open wooded areas on rocky out croppings appeared, with occasional runs of 6 and 7 shops and motels, all well known names running parallel to these 4 & 5 lane carriageways, would you dare to stop and if you did how would you ever get back on the road. I also never saw one motorbike on the open road!  There were also some very impressive residential estates, I would not even like to start to guess the price of these mini estates, but I suspect it involves an awful lot of 0s. I found the driving habit of undertaking very off putting, I would hazard a guess that this very American practice is the chief reason for the majority of accidents we saw, when you saw the position of the cars in relation to the direction of travel. Upon on arrival at Woodbury you get some hint of the size of the outlet when you saw the car parks numbers 1-66. Once provided with the map off our coach party went with the zeal of Vikings on a raiding party, each with there own store lined up to rape and pillage, wether it be Saks on Fifth Avenue, Disney Outlet, Ralph Laurent, Versace or many of the hundreds of outlets available. They did not take into account massed ranks of Japanese Kamikaze shopers, who cruise between stores like a Great White Shark who smells blood in the water and can clear whole shelves in a single swoop as I witnessed first hand in a smellies store called "Crabtree and Evelyn" one couple bought 12 pots of some cream or unction at $30 dollars a pop, after completing their purchase they got on the iPhones to summon the rest of the tribe and within minutes it was Pearl Harbour all over again. Like the infamous Japanese Whaling factory ships, they have developed a crafty way of carrying their booty. The first stop for the Sharks is to visit the Samsonite shop and purchase a suitcase on wheels and proceed to fill it chock a block with the purchases, minus any packaging. At times as you sit on the benches provided for exasperated husbands all you can here is the trundle of tiny wheels on block paving. After going into a few shops and playing the converting dollars to sterling then adding purchase tax, then taking off 20% if you purchased it with MasterCard, then taking off the 7.5% discount if there was a R in the month and you had coupon 7 from your booklet and were born after the second Tuesday in the year of the Goat. I simply gave up, deciding man is not programmed for shopping/bargain hunting, did I need it, it's easier to get it from Cotton Traders.  Although the shopping side of my day was relatively unsuccessful, total purchases 1 skinny latte from MacDonald's, it was great people watching territory, the purpose of the male in shopping is as a beast of burden. I am sure I witnessed several attempts at the "how many bags of purchases can you carry" world record, even children were enlisted in the transportation efforts, nothing fragile, but still capable of carrying if bribed with ice cream from one of the food halls. We returned to the ship tired, knackered but in some cases, mission accomplished, till next time. No rocking tonight, knackered.

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