I am an Edinburgh shopper and definitely not, sometimes I just shop. I am because I know the Princess Street shoulder-dodge by heart: the one where you’re walking and then do the side-turn-shrug motion to slide past other shoppers in a hurry to move. You see, they’re trying to get done and home and are of course annoyed with the constant people-hindrances, that, who, demand patience and calm consideration.
 
Or, on the other hand, it’s like swimming, like drowning, and the crowd is a storming wave of cold that works with momentum and gravity to push and pull you backwards and away. 
 
In order to breathe you are forced to choose between two characters: you can become the shopper, who is a person who shops, who looks each opposition in the eyes, shares, and then interrupts her own steps in order to get out of the way. Or you can become the shopper who is a shopper, who eschews all glances, who hordes and maintains everything for herself and who grows taller because of it. You then breathe in the air above the surface. Your eyes belong to your goal in the distance, at the other end of the street. Your eyes are still because stuck, mouth set because you are determined, face altogether chiselled and beautiful to those others who come at you, as if you are frozen in a captured image. You flow—so smooth—because your path is clear; they all move for you.
 
That single shoulder simply points, and you keep moving. 
 
I’ve got this down. I have the skill now. I am the skill. I have become the shopper. But only when I shop. Afterwards I just want to jump off a bridge. And I used to like swimming, too.