World went mad ages ago

Me trying to remember I've got everything and get back to the car before rush hour traffic peaks. Them moaning because they actually have to walk somewhere. After a whirlwind scuttle around several shops, I nip into Specsavers as my last port of call. After the usual meet n' greet, I ask if they've got any contact lens solution. The assistant pauses, glances briefly at my children and then enquires: 'Is it for slime?'It was.Now, let's just pause a moment, because this probably won't mean much to people without kids of a certain age. In a nutshell, there's a craze among some youngsters to use household ingredients to make '˜slime', a putty-like substance which seems to have them all enthralled. Said ingredients include things like baking soda, PVA glue, food colouring and contact lens solution. Mix them all together and voilÃ , you have slime. Maybe... if you mix it right.Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was the abstract moment of Specsavers selling ingredients for slime. When I asked the assistant, who was very accommodating by the way, if she was asked this a lot, she said she was. Hence her reply to me in the first place. Apparently, they are now getting so many people going in there to buy contact lens solution for slime that it's now what you might call '˜a thing'. (If you were using that in conversation, one person would go: 'Is that an actual thing then?' And the other one would nod.)I digress.But listen, the world went mad years ago. I mean, who would have thought Tesco would ever offer banking services or telephone contracts? They sell cucumbers! Ikea sell meatballs. Nowadays we don't even bat an eyelid at stores like amazon (an online book shop) selling just about everything from washing machines to Nicolas Cage pillowcases (Â£10.99 thank-you very much)... all of which brings me neatly to the recent reports of a meltdown in the retail sector, both on the high street (which we already knew about, because we can see it dying a slow death) and

WIGAN 30-07-18 Annie Fletcher, ten, holds a slime workshop for patients and their families at The Oak Centre at Wigan and Leigh hospice.

After the usual meet n’ greet, I ask if they’ve got any contact lens solution. The assistant pauses, glances briefly at my children and then enquires: “Is it for slime?”

It was.

Now, let’s just pause a moment, because this probably won’t mean much to people without kids of a certain age. In a nutshell, there’s a craze among some youngsters to use household ingredients to make ‘slime’, a putty-like substance which seems to have them all enthralled. Said ingredients include things like baking soda, PVA glue, food colouring and contact lens solution. Mix them all together and voilà, you have slime. Maybe... if you mix it right.

Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was the abstract moment of Specsavers selling ingredients for slime. When I asked the assistant, who was very accommodating by the way, if she was asked this a lot, she said she was. Hence her reply to me in the first place. Apparently, they are now getting so many people going in there to buy contact lens solution for slime that it’s now what you might call ‘a thing’. (If you were using that in conversation, one person would go: “Is that an actual thing then?” And the other one would nod.)

I digress.

But listen, the world went mad years ago. I mean, who would have thought Tesco would ever offer banking services or telephone contracts? They sell cucumbers! Ikea sell meatballs. Nowadays we don’t even bat an eyelid at stores like amazon (an online book shop) selling just about everything from washing machines to Nicolas Cage pillowcases (£10.99 thank-you very much)... all of which brings me neatly to the recent reports of a meltdown in the retail sector, both on the high street (which we already knew about, because we can see it dying a slow death) and now, god forbid, online. Well, what do you expect when everyone is trying to do everything all at once?

There’s a conclusion here somewhere but it keeps evading me, mainly because I’m eyeing up some grass flipflops on ebay, watching YouTube, responding to emails, taking phone calls... oh, and writing this. Maybe I should just do one thing at once. Same goes for the high street/internet.