The Midnight Shopper

Since it's the holidays and I've spent most of the last six days sleeping, I decided at about 10pm last night that it would be a good idea to head to Chadstone Shopping Centre, which is open for 34 hours straight over Sunday/Monday. I don't have any shopping left to do, but I figured that because it was pretty late in the evening, it wouldn't be too busy there and it would keep me amused for a couple of hours.

Ok, so it was a stupid, totally unoriginal idea. It seems that every other person in Melbourne had very inconsiderately left all of their Christmas shopping until the last minute and were managing to ruin things for those of us who, by some miracle, finished their shopping early.

It should have a been a good sign that we should turn around and head for the hills when we got to Warrigal road and the traffic was absolute chaos. Three lanes of traffic, all trying to merge into the right hand lane was not a pretty sight. It's amazing how many people think they can just sneak a tonne of metal into a 10cm gap between cars - and that sticking out across two lanes of traffic is a-ok.

It's no wonder people get so road rage-ey at Christmas.

We stuck to the left lane and headed around to the other side of the shopping centre, which was relatively tame - although it did take four changes of lights for us to get into the carpark. We fluked a parking space almost immediately, without even having to stalk anyone, which made a nice change.

Inside it was more crowded than I had thought - the walkways inside Chadstone are pretty wide and the centre is absolutely enormous, so I figured that even with the crazy traffic, things shouldn't be too bad. Again, I was wrong. Someone had the brilliant idea of filling the walkways up with vendors stalls, so it was chaotically busy. I was belted with so many boxes of Barbie scooters and train sets that I expect my shins to be solid purple this morning. Kids presents are dangerous when placed in the hands of frantic, last minute shoppers.

Don't these people know that Santa does home delivery?

We stuck it out as long as we could, but had to bail out after about an hour as the throng of people just seemed to swell with every passing minute. It was bizarrely hot in there with all those bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder and 20,000 people all talking at once in stone corridors is loud.

Leaving was a lot easier than getting in, and I didn't even mind being stalked to our parking space by a desperate looking man with a car full of kids. I guess my great idea of a late night shop while everyone else was asleep was not really as great as I hoped.

Christmas shopping really could kill the Christmas spirit in even the most dedicated holiday-lover.