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ROME - SHOPPING

Shopping is a bizarre experience by modern British standards. There are virtually no department stores or supermarkets. My wife was looking at a bracelet in the window of a clothes store. We went in looking for the rack of bracelets. An enquiry elicited the manageress, the manageress fetched a key, the key opened a draw in which three examples were kept. This was not a Cartier watch but a piece of 'junk-jewelry' worth about £7.00 Sterling. I had a similar experience in a chemist's where I bought some plasters and a box of tissues. It was counter service only. I couldn't just pick them up and hand over the dosh. I had to ask for them (in Italian), and the tissues were extracted from a locked cupboard.

With labour-intensive shops characteristically empty of both goods and customers, it's difficult to understand how the consumer economy functions here. But another sort of economy is there. Small family-run fruit shops can be found right in the centre. In Britain such shops were long ago destroyed by the twin assault of taxation and Big Business supermarkets and chainstores. The Roman model is in many ways more desirable but it's a strange and almost embarrassing experience for those brought up on the impersonal model of mass consumption.

Rik - 8 June 2001

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