Wednesday 17th October

I needed a new watch battery and strap for my Mondaine Swiss Railway Watch; I knew John Lewis didn’t do repairs but thought they would know somewhere nearby which might, so I went in and asked.  Surprise, surprise; the answer was Debenhams.  I have always disliked Debenhams; possibly my antipathy was due to a former partner’s love of the shop, but actually I think it is the messiness of the store I dislike so much.  Compared to the regimental tidiness of John Lewis, Debenhams lacks any real character.  You know a John Lewis customer at once, decidedly middle class, a bit fuddy-duddy, changing yet changeless as canal water (as Viv Stanshall once remarked).  But who are Debenhams customers, the smart crowd are all in Zara or Next or Hennes, and the cheapo’s in Primark, so who shops in Debenhams?

I took my watch there and the man was very efficient and polite, it would take about thirty minutes so I wandered downstairs to the coffee shop.  And here I found the repository of lost souls.  The myopic man with milk bottle thick lenses and a belt holding his trousers up a few inches too high; a trio of muslim women clad head to toe in black with only letter boxes to view the world from; a couple of middle aged women in clothes twenty years too young for them, dyed and permed hair, far too much make-up and ridiculous florid pink spectacles; an old man in trilby and overcoat and trembling walking stick left to guard the coffee while his wife shopped; a black man who looked as if this was his first port of call after disembarking from Trinidad, looking frantically around him but recognizing nothing; a frumpy-dumpy mum of noisy twins who was the right side of twenty but looked the wrong side of forty.  A sad and depressing crowd, no one in a hurry to finish their solitary drinks, mopping up crumbs with their fingers from cakes they bought when they weren’t even hungry.  And I joined them.  While waiting for my watch to be fixed I too became one of the Debenhams people in the repository of lost souls.