And I did not die

I  went shopping today, and I did not die.

Well, what of it? 

At lunch time I was really worried about going shopping.  The idea was that my whole family apart from dad went into a nearby city on the train, and then my mum took my little sister and brother to the shoe shop to have their shoes checked while my other sister and I went clothes shopping.

This did not please me, because the idea of being in a city without my mother's apron strings to cling to made me want to stay at home and become a hermit.  However, I needed to go to a shop to buy some pencil leads for my mechanical pencil, and so I said that I'd go.

It turned out that it was not at all scary being in a familiar city with only my sister, and that after I got on the train I was not worried about it at all.  So I have no idea why I was so nervous beforehand.

Well, we went to the clothes shop where we'd arranged to meet mum, and I said to my sister, "Let's browse together.  It'll take more time that way."

We then went to look at the winter hats, and it turned out that my sister thought she might want to buy one, so she tried several hats with gusto.  I was horrified at this liberal trying of hats, and slunk away before the security guard inevitably came to chuck her out of the store...only the inevitable never happened, and after a while she came and found me, and remarked that we hadn't browsed together for very long.

Mum turned up after a while, and we went back to the hats, and my sister tried on several for mum and then tried on several in front of a mirror.  She finally bought the first one she had tried, and which I had said suited her but mum had disliked.

After we left this shop, we went home.  I spotted a man and his wife—pregnant with what was probably their first child.  They were young, not much older than me; they can't have been older than twenty, and the girl was surely as near my age as makes no difference.  She was heavily pregnant, so they must have been married for a while.  I assume they were married because they appeared to be Muslims.  And as far as I could tell, they were fond of each other.

Finally, I know I haven't been blogging recently, but my last few blogs have been quite wooden and I really did not want to post yet another wooden blog.  So I waited until I could write something that wasn't wooden and could be posted without worry.