Christmas shopping. SOS. SEND HELP!

Whooo go you! ^-^ 

I'm glad it went well and you were ok. Really good to hear.

Have a lovely day :) 

Autonomistic said:

Can you become an environmental activist and declare that it is against your principles. Tell your wife that you are a huge fan of your fellow autist Greta Thunberg. 

Excellent suggestion! I will write that down and put it aside for next year.

I would like to offer thanks and regards to you all for your thoughtful comments during my torturous endeavours yesterday. It is true at times I wept like a baby but somehow I survived the ordeal. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. Its nice knowing I have this community to turn to when I need to.

One must confess that my Good Lady is not the ogress I dressed her up as. She was quite understanding yesterday. Before we left she did offer to find other means of transport to get to London, her favourite alternative choice was going with her best friend and local Know-It-All Madge, who I have to tell you is an irritating sort and I had to make a choice there and then. Well, there really was no choice. I had to go at this point as afterwards Madge would have come in and then it’s impossible to get rid of her for at least three hours, sometimes longer than that. I must say Mr. Spergs suggestions were tempting for Madge... But one must remain strong and keep on the road of sanity.

But my Good Lady did offer and for that I am grateful. She doesn’t understand all of my autism and how certain things affect me but she does understand some and I am also grateful for that.

The drive in to London was long, exhausting and somewhat boring. I was driving for rather a long time and appeared to be making little progress. The centre of London was chaotic. My Good Lady could see I was uncomfortable just being in the car and suggested I wait in the car and listened to my Roy Orbison cassette. Again, I was grateful and said if she wouldn’t mind.

So that’s what I did. I thought for a moment, perhaps the Good Lord above was smiling down on me, a glimmer of hope in my eye. But as usual He was not smiling down on me, merely getting my hopes up... My cassette player unit had stopped working. No Roy Orbison for me. The radio was also out of commission despite working flawlessly on the last weekend. I suspect a fuse has blown, or the cable has come detached somehow. A little job for me over this week at some point... No rest for the wicked!

There was a lot of people present. Shoppers hungry for Christmas bargains. It was like being at the zoo and watching the animals in their enclosures. I felt safe in the motor car though and remained eternally grateful that I could be there. So with no music to hear I strategically nipped out of the car and fetched my newspaper, crossword and notebook from the boot. Always prepared. I lit my pipe and then read my newspaper and attempted the crossword.

My Good Lady was remarkably fast, unusual for her as she has a dodgy hip but when she returned she said she was worried about me on my own. She also bought me a candy cane. Very thoughtful indeed.

One feels rather proud of himself right now. Yesterday was hard indeed but I am glad I was able to do it. I am an old fossil now some may say so I must act grownup, sometimes.

Thank you again good people for your words yesterday. I have read them all and give you thanks.

Regards,

George.

Old Timer I'm really sorry about your anxieties with going to London :/ 

That must have been really difficult for you but it shows how much you love your wife that you would take her.

It's sweet but I do feel for you because I know what a busy place London is.

And how stressful Christmas shopping is wherever you are! 

I really do hope it all went well for you and you're feeling a bit better now :) 

Sending positive vibes your way.

Yikes, why would she force you to go shopping during this time of the year? Why can't she just go shopping with someone that enjoys shopping and all the hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping? She could go with another family member or friend. Why would she drag you into it, and force you to go? 

No matter how old or young you are, if you said no and didn't agree on doing something, then you shouldn't have to be forced into doing it, especially if it's someone who loves you. I mean she might get upset that you ruined her day, but she was trying to ruin your day. She could have made other plans. Went with other people. 

Online shopping also takes time to deliver, and considering that online delivery services are getting swarmed this time of the year, it's not a guarantee that the gifts will be delivered in time for Christmas. 

But anyways, I hope the best for you.  

Ahh hope it went okay in the end. Sounds like a nightmare. It so difficult to explain to someone else why something like that is so hard to do. 

I find a good trick is to pretend you have a blister and say that you’ll sit on a bench whilst they go in a shop. That way you can be away from the crowds, can sit with headphones or earplugs in and be in your own little world til they return, turn it into a positive and offer to hold all the shopping bags whilst you sit and wait so her hands are free to shop! :) 

Ah, Old Timer, sorry to hear this! I loathe having to go to busy places to shop - I prefer to do it all online. The only positive I can see in your situation is that you're driving, not taking the tube - which makes it marginally better! 

I live quite close to a big Westfield shopping centre which I will very occasionally bear to go into, but only middle of the day on a work/school day so it is quiet - and they're designed with space in mind so they can seem not too crowded even if busy. 

Otherwise it's 100% online only, so I can stay in my PJ's and not have to deal with people. 

If you can pay my hourly rate, I'll step up and stand in for you.

I'm famliiar with Driving a Rolls too, and will be able to get enthusiastic about helping her with the shopping. (After all I'll be nowhere near when the presents are opened!) I also can provide an easy to use excel spreadsheet where you good lady can list all her proposed present recipients, apply a simple number between one and ten indicating how much she loves each of them, you can enter the total spend and then she will be presented with a carefully calculated preset budget for each person, which will help her to not overspend.

Yes this is an attempt at humour (although possibly a practical solution if you have money to burn employing me to stand in ain't going to be cheap) 

Other approaches you could try are heavy drinking or consumption of drugs, although then someone else still needs to drive the Rolls. (I've got a Rolls Canardly parked on the drive myself). 

Find the agent of her favourite celebrity and try and get a home visit that will conflict with her proposed shopping trip.

Obviously there's the "bury her under the patio and tell anyone who asks that you last saw her ordering a taxi to go Christmas shopping approach" but that can have a lot more downsides that might be immediately apparent and I don't recommend it.  

Nah, I think you might just have to bite the bullet and suck it down. I carry a camera often to such outings and occasionally get a good or interesting picture to try and compensate myself for the hideous suffering I have to undergo. I did try a strategy of buying something for myself by means of compensation but you just end up visiting money on stuff you don't need, and you are supposed to be wasting your money on things other people don't need... 

This is somewhat off-topic, but reading your post has brought back memories of supermarket shopping with my parents during the 1970s and 1980s when I was a young child. It was noticeable that there would always be a group of middle-aged and elderly husbands outside the supermarket, which fascinated me. Meanwhile, their wives would be inside the supermarket, often struggling to navigate shopping trolleys with decidedly dodgy wheels. It was as though there was some unspoken rule... A memo that my dad and younger males hadn't received, declaring that men were strictly prohibited from entering shops with their spouses.

However, as I have gotten older, I have developed an increasing dislike of physically visiting shops, irrespective of the time of year. Whilst I know I have the luxury of being able to order items online, there are instances when I want to see, touch, or smell items, before committing myself to purchasing them. Returning items ordered online can sometimes feel like a hassle.

Whilst I agree with your wife that it can be good to get out, I find it usually only applies if it is to do something that we enjoy and/or want to do. That said, sometimes it can be better to go along with something we may not necessarily want to do, to keep the peace. Admittedly, the downside is that we can pay the price for it afterward (shutdowns, and the like).

Driving into central London at this time of year  

Can you become an environmental activist and declare that it is against your principles. Tell your wife that you are a huge fan of your fellow autist Greta Thunberg. 

You really do need to learn to say no. If you find yourself going then for goodness sake stay in the car. Let your wife do the shops but you do not need to be there.

well theres a thing with shopping in person, its different and special, a event.

for me i remember going into physical game stores browsing the shelves looking for any cool game i hadnt played. it feels more special and memorable than buying from a online store or streaming service and its something now lost to the world.... likely kinda like blockbusters too, if anyone used to browse blockbusters for vhs films to watch on the weekend, now its all instant streaming on your tv which is better but it takes from it as a event/moment and ruins the hype and excitement of it.

although yeah everything from home in a click is more convenient ...not always cheaper though as when it comes to gaming i find digital games are more expensive than physical disc games as the gaming stores are tight fisted and keep all games at release day price forever... speaking like 70 quid for a 20 year old game when a physical version of it would be down to 10 quid by that time.

anyway another disadvantage of online shopping is you have to rely on delivery service.... and they are bad at christmas as christmas period is peak time and super busy for delivery companies. so you get alot of eternally lost missing or damaged parcels in peak period and have a higher chance of not recieving your delivery.... my mum still hasnt got her thing she ordered online that was due last christmas, its forever lost as last christmas was pretty bad for deliveries as royal mail went on strike and every other company got overwhelmed.