My kind of shopping

It is gratifying to see that Chanukah is keeping up with Christmas: coming earlier every year (no matter when it falls), bringing the opportunity to consume, to spend, to party.

The JCC had its Chanukah bash, 8 Nights, at Bush Hall on the very cusp of December. The magnificent Yiddish Twist Orchestra, newly minted, led us through an evening of rumba and twist in the dusky nightclub atmosphere of the blitz and the heady green shoots of post-war optimism.  What I liked most was bumping into my friend Hugh (only just on the right side of 50) who had brought his mum along!

And this last weekend, the festival month’s opener, I enjoyed my first serious foray into shopping heaven, its bright lights apparently undimmed by the credit crunch.

It was a curious juxtaposition of contrasts.  It began with an unplanned drop-in to a ‘Winterval Fayre’, in aid of Marie Curie.  It’s a fine cause – but sadly, in this case, rather more interesting than the merchandise!  We looked hard for opportunities to consume, but had to content ourselves with a modest contribution. 

So on, in contrast, to that mecca of mammon, Selfridges. No sense of recession that day: the hordes pushed and jostled; we swam, we waded, we struggled, we bobbed along in the flow and the rush of the mass filling the store’s ground floor.  We were assaulted with squirts of perfume, tempted with trays containing fragments of falafel and crumbs of cheese, bawled out with announcements, dazzled by the lasers and gleaming mirrors…  We wanted to fix some shoes – I agree, an odd venue to choose that day, but don’t ask!  Failing, we bought laces instead and headed northwards as quickly as we could.

The antidote was a gentle meander through our synagogue’s annual Chanukah Bazaar, this year reincarnated as a ‘Fest’.

What it lacked in heartstring-tugging, what it lacked in sophistication and chic, it made up for in spade-loads of real warmth, and the comfort and ease that always comes from stepping back into the community.  Friends, friendly faces – plus the same grumpy ones on those who’ve seen you every week or month for the last 10 years but still insist they don’t recognise you…

And of course, the bookstall.  Many of the books were there last year, and the year before that, but each time, they’re just a little more interesting. I buy too many. Passing over ‘Guess who’s Jewish?’, a workmanlike set of Churchill’s ‘History of the Second World War’, and the complete works of Somerset Maugham, I light upon Joseph Roth’s Reports from Berlin, eagerly seize Festivals of the Jewish Year, a Modern Interpretation and Guide (circa 1952), and pounce on Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated.  Finally, with quiet pleasure, I fall for Selfridges, the Story of the Store, 1909-1984 by Gordon Honeycombe.

How satisfying is a bookstall in a Chanukah bazaar.  And at a pound a book, what’s not to like?!

 

Comments

[Susan]

This is an even better way of keeping up with your life than getting together! Susan x

[Dana]

And the best way to learn Hebrew is here: www.101letshavefun.com