On line shopping

is a temptation. I do not care for actual shopping - unless books or yarn are involved. I get cross and scratchy when the supermarket changes the layout of anything. My idea there is to be able to go straight to the shelves for the things I need without the need to backtrack.

    "You are so organised Cat!" someone told me recently. I am not. I am lazy. The idea of having to backtrack in the supermarket fills me with anxiety. 

I loathe shopping for clothes. I am currently wearing jeans bought on line (and on sale), a shirt (ditto) and a cardigan  (ditto). My footwear was bought (on sale) from the late local (and much lamented) shoe shop. The girls in there knew me from the occasions on which I had picked up shoes for much older acquaintances. (That does not count as shopping but as helping other people.) One of them stopped me outside the shop and told me they had put these aside for me. I was in and out in three minutes. 

I avoid Amazon. My brief foray into that informed me it is expensive. I do use E-bay of necessity. There are things we have needed from time to time which are simply not available in bricks and mortar stores here. (And, before you ask, the stores here actually suggest it from time to time.)

Yesterday I prowled into the Chinese equivalent of Amazon. Mmm... interesting. You could buy just about anything from it - if you dare. I know my friend P.... who  imports a lot of yarn from other places  is  very cautious about such websites.

It's huge - and I use the word advisedly. Yes, it is in English - Chinese English in many cases but it is possible to navigate it. There are things there which are very cheap and there are things which are very expensive. There are a bewildering number of choices. 

The local shop manager who told me about the site did not mention just how big the site was - perhaps she knew it would put me off? I typed in the search terms she suggested and came up with what she had told me I would come up with. 

"But hunt Cat because some shops on it are cheaper than others. You can tick "free shipping" to tell you the exact price or work out what it will cost."

I did all this. I now know how much I need to put on my post office debit card. I can buy a book  in Chinese - translated from the English. I know it will be the right book because the front cover is identical to the copy I own. A group of us are giving it to a Chinese friend for her birthday. It's a knitting book. Our friend's English is reasonably good but it doesn't extend to understanding the finer points of patterns. This is a technical book that she has seen on my shelves and told me she wished it was in Chinese. I thought it might be.

On line shopping has its uses when it comes to such things. I just have to trust that the twenty-three dollars is returned to me in the form of a book.