Shopping, of itself, is neither good nor bad.
Personally, I dislike shops, bars or restaurants where staff linger at the entrance. They remind me of spiders and webs.
Shopping, as an experience distinct from a necessity, has seldom felt very good to me. Even when I shop with something specific in mind, I nearly always get the feeling that what I am buying is ultimately going to prove a disappointment, never more so than today, in the era of Amazon etc. where the inability to see before buying is a huge problem. Exercising the right to return within a stated number of days is simply but another damned inconvenience that a real shop can help to prevent. Having said that, I did buy the Annie Leibovitz tome Vida de una Fotógrafa 1990 - 2005 in a real shop; unfortunately, it came sealed, and when I got it home, I wished like hell I'd saved my many lost pennies.
One of the joys of driving back to Scotland was spending so many afternoons in Glasgow's Waterstones, a beautiful bookshop with lots of photographic books... not bad coffee, either, but woeful toilet facilities back in 2004.
On the other hand, especially for older women, I can fully understand that if you find yourself living alone, then going out to the shops does provide a means of passing a relatively unthreatening couple of hours that walking the streets or the park by yourself may not. Not all are mentally equipped to handle well an empty house that may once have actually been alive and kicking. The change between love and hatred for a home can be remarkably swift in coming about.
Afternoons for elderly parents could always be made a little more comfortable with a modest box of cakes from Marks and Sparks! I loved their cream meringues and chocolate eclaires... which really shows that you should enjoy your time to the extent it allows you to do; I could never enjoy those things today for all sorts of medical reasons which, ironically enough, might have been partly the fault of those delightful goodies I just mentioned.
Rob
