Reverend John and The Church of Start Shopping

Accessibly situated near the tyre-burning circus of M62 J12, it’s like a cathedral, The Trafford Centre, with its terrific glass domes and marble pillars. So on my visit there today I decided to be Reverend John of The Church of Start Shopping.

At the entrance I sought to make a sign of water to acknowledge my retail baptism. I used the cold tap in the lavish loos, and remembered my initiation into shopping at my mother’s side when Tescos was just a well-stocked corner store, and through the requests of male family members to run for tobacco or a newspaper. I recalled my early forays into town to shop on my own, then as now being drawn solely to bookshops and record stores, and remembering how I’ve always used mail order, way before the internet (largely because of my obscure interests requiring specialist suppliers), I contemplated how little my shopping habits have changed.

I looked for a service sheet to guide me through the coming activity and at a cheerful information point I soon found a copy of Your Guide – Trafford Centre Always Ahead (sponsored by Coca-Cola). Inside it is a Shopping Guide by Category, listing probably 450 stores from Audio to Toys and Games, from Apple to Zara. This helpfully identified the store’s position in a zone on the fold-out map which proved to be more difficult to use, the sheer scale of the Trafford Centre hardly transferable into diagrammatic form. But it did help me orientate myself, find out where Waterstones and HMV were, and introduced me to the Trafford Centre’s Holy Trinity – three flagship stores connected by two luscious avenues, to and from which all the other stores flow: Debenhams, John Lewis and Selfridges.

I saw devoted people, busily keeping their part of the operation going. Shop staff in roles like vergers, arranging window displays, checking stock: in the entrance to M&S a woman was dusting down a female display model, preening her, making small adjustments to her outfit, with great attention to detail. Trafford Centre employees in identifiable red jackets, in roles like sidespeople, giving out information, handling questions, and covertly acting as security cover. And deputy managers in roles like churchwardens, guiding junior staff in their tasks, giving time and limited advice to visiting salespeople. On a settee in Waterstones a staff member and a salesman agreed to resume their conversation in a fortnight, once the new manager was back from his break and he’d advised his staff what his buying policy was going to be this year.

The music – in most stores was inoffensive and soft; I noticed that some were playing blues which although it was of the easy-listening variety, hinted at a darker, more painful subcurrent in the activity in which we – shoppers and staff – were all sharing.

As in any act of worship the prayers spoken from the front of the stores bore, I suspect, only partial resemblance to those in the hearts of the shopping congregation.

Retailers prayer

Our shopper
who art in Trafford
Read and remember our name.
Your credit comes,
Your will be won
over by our heavenly offers.
Give us today your hard-earned bread
And forgive us our promotional exaggerations
As we forgive those other stores who exaggerate promotionally against us.
Let us lead you into temptation,
For yours is the income,
the hope and the store card
Forever and ever;
Pay here.

Shoppers prayer

Our Trafford
which art near Salford
Help me get a parking space out of the rain.
Your doors are open, my will is one
with yours: to buy things here today.
Give us this day the things we need
or – forgive us – think we need
as we’ve seen others buying them before us.
You will lead us into temptation
But let ours be the wisdom, the restraint and the bank balance
Now and forever;
Discounts.

The Trafford Centre Prayer Room is empty when I go in, but outside in the mall I think that the retail workers and the shoppers will be praying on a deeper level, all manner of things pertaining to their day’s tasks and relationships with those they are with – and without.

The central ritual of the Trafford Centre experience, is The Purchase. Here, the shopper experiences elements of the Communion: the polite queue to reach the sacred service point, the holding out of hands (exchange of goods) and the giving of a receipt to affirm the validity of the purchase. Various complexities serve to elaborate and elongate the experience: the paying-by-card subritual, the still-peripheral but growing tendency by retailer or customer to question the need for the goods to be removed in a disposable carrier bag.

Acts of worship end with a blessing and words of dismissal. In shopping, the blessing is perhaps received at point of purchase, the hope of promised satisfaction via the newly-bought goods (it may not last till the goods’ arrival home, as by then a new urge for some other thing may have taken over). As for words of dismissal, The Trafford Centre will not utter them. In fact, The Trafford Centre does very little to assist any shopper to find their way out of the Cathedral. Exits are barely marked; clocks or other reminders of outside commitments are a minimum. Only out in the Car Park are dismissals ordered, via the largest EXIT signs I think I’ve ever seen (to match the scale of the parking).

The Trafford Centre doesn’t want to dismiss you… unless, I suspect, you decide to linger too long without purchasing anything, or continue scribbling what look like satirical versions of The Lord’s Prayer in a small tatty notebook whilst sat on a bench outside Ax-Paris.

[Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping is here]