A nostalgic shopping trip down memory lane does wonders for the high street, and my step count

When I first arrived in London in 1982 I was waitressing in a Covent Garden wine bar, bizarrely named The Crusting Pipe. This was where my now husband came in for a ‘crusty cob’

I found myself shopping in Covent Garden this week. As in real life, walking-the-streets shopping, popping in here and out of there and trying on items of clothing in proper cubicles, and you know what? It was great.

I’ve got very lazy about real-life shopping, even though I live bang slap on a big red bus route that takes me directly into the heart of London’s West End. I usually find it easier to click a mouse around a screen and wait for the thud of a parcel, or more inevitably, the discovery of the “Sorry we missed you note”. For me “live shopping” seems to have dwindled to a weekly supermarket shop where the old man accompanies me because he likes using the DIY barcoder (aka the zapper) due to the fact it makes him feel like he’s in Star Wars, even though he is merely pricing up cod loins in breadcrumbs.

A combination of laziness, financial belt-tightening and realising that I already have enough stuff anyway, has drastically cut down my “shopping for the sake of it” habit, but once in a blue moon it’s really nice to get out there and physically shop.

I was in Covent Garden because I had a meeting nearby later in the day. It’s an area that always fills me with nostalgia because when I first arrived in London in 1982 I was waitressing in a wine bar, bizarrely named The Crusting Pipe, bang slap in the middle of the Piazza. This was where my now husband came in for his lunch and over a “crusty cob”, cheddar and pickle lunch, arranged a date for later that evening. Dear reader, the poor sap hadn’t a clue what he was taking on.

Back then, the fruit and veg market still occupied a small corner of its former home and Old Covent Garden, a world of wooden barrows and gutters full of cabbage leaves was only just getting used to rubbing shoulders with the sudden influx of trendy wine bars, hairdressers and boutiques.

As a very skint twentysomething waitress, I remember literally pressing my nose up against the window of Whistles clothing shop, not daring to go in, even during the sale season. The day I could actually afford to buy something was huge.

Covent Garden has seen many businesses come and go during the intervening years, but it’s still the kind of place where American tourists can feasibly wet themselves over its traditional London charm. After all, it’s got cobbles and little back alleys and traditional pubs like the Lamb & Flag, which once upon a time, back in the good old slum days was known as the “Bucket of Blood”.

It’s also got shops, living breathing shops, full of shiny things and music. In the two hours before my meeting, I tried on a dress and a silk shirt the colour of a baby’s bottom, some glittery trousers and another pair of velvet trousers which wouldn’t do up around my gut. I bought a new powder compact after a tiny, flawlessly made-up sales girl told me that my own make-up was cracking around my face, which made my nose look like an erupting volcano (I added that bit), and I bought a new blusher and a dark green nail varnish. Weirdly, I experienced the same endorphin rush at the till that I get from yoga.

I took myself out for coffee in a tiny Swedish bakery that wasn’t a chain and then tried on more things in different shops, some of which were out of my price range and that I had no intention of really buying. I looked at jewellery, made mental Christmas shopping notes and browsed a proper bookshop where you could actually smell the ink and paper and saw lots of things that I wouldn’t think to look for online.

I also checked out the whereabouts of my latest novel and considering it was stuck on a dark shelf next to complete strangers, I removed her and put her bang slap on the central table where she could sit next to all the really popular girls and enjoy their company... God, I was having a great time.

Of course, all this is a long-winded way of saying that many of us who despair the demise of the high street are forgetting that we might be part of the problem. How many of us rail against the empty shop windows and the To Let signs without actually getting out there and propping up the retailers ourselves?

Online shopping is massively convenient, but let’s not forget how pleasurable the act of shopping in real life can be.

Even if you don’t buy anything, just think of your step count. Most days, when I’m sitting at home, writing and online browsing, I barely make it into double figures, while last Thursday I managed six thousand steps before lunch – now, there’s an incentive.

Who knows, a couple more shopping sprees and I might be able to do those velvet trousers up.