Hello, everyone.
Welcome again to another podcast from Teacher Joseph. Today I’m inside the shopping centre and I’m going to describe for you what I can see and what’s here.
OK. So first of all, I’m sitting on some kind of bench, which they have in shopping centres. It’s covered in leather and it’s purple. So it’s a little bit odd…. it’s a little bit odd compared to other things you find in a shopping centre.
Yeah, this one is nice, but a bit impoverished. Not the best place. And they’re playing, they’re playing elevator music. That’s basically music, which you would kind of find in an elevator. It’s instrumental. It sounds a bit bland, not really making a statement of any kind, and it’s obviously very long. It’s not just one track, it’s just kind of hotel lobby music, you know.
What else can I tell you? Well… looking around….I’ve been sitting here for a little while, and now I’ve just stood up waiting to move. Looking around, I can tell you that this is very diverse. Lots of shapes and sizes, lots of different colours, as well as different diverse people. I cannot make assumptions about them of course, by their skin colour, but it certainly is a very diverse shopping centre, especially when I can see and hear different types of people and hear different languages.
The main shop which is inside the shopping centre and open is selling greetings cards. As you know here in the UK we sell greetings cards for absolutely everything. I’m just looking in the window of this shop. Let’s see:
For someone special.
Happy birthday.
We have more here:
Happy divorce.
Happy Father’s Day…which is coming up on the 15th of June.,,,Different from other countries…our Father’s Day is not associated with any religious or Saints day as it is in the Mediterranean Countries and:
Happy day that I met you.
Happy divorce.
Sorry. Your pet died.
Oh, my goodness me. We have cards for absolutely everything. Happy 18. Happy 21. Happy 40th. Wow, I didn’t realise we were such specialists with cards, but clearly we are. This would be a rather depressing shopping centre because the card shop is the only one that’s open. Ohh yeah, many of these shops are closed, some of them completely empty.
And …and in those windows there are signs which say “to let” to let means available to rent and you sometimes see that here outside shops, outside vacant apartments “to let” it means available to rent, there’s also a pop-up shop here. A pop-up shop is a shop that’s here, but it will not be here permanently. It’s only on a temporary basis. So that’s another way that shops can operate within shopping centres, they can just pop up.
I’m now passing a supermarket. It has some lovely pictures of food in the window. But the sign says “closed permanently”. Ohh. And looking in the window. Clearly another “to let” sign. “Please contact this company for further details.”….but it’s being used for seminars by charities, while it’s closed and one says here “experimental noise artist seminar coming soon”. So yeah, no longer a supermarket oh…. photo ID.,,,oh there’s a photo booth here if you want to pay £6 to get your passport photos.
All kinds of instructions on that little photo booth. And yeah, everything’s closed but lots of people inside. Let me just walk here on the outside.
Here we are. Yeah. OK. So now I’m outside and I’m able to see what’s around me. I’m in a town square. As you can probably hear…
And it’s around….. Well, as you can probably hear, it’s quite busy is what I wanted to say. You might be able to hear the clock chiming, which lets me know the time, which is around 3:00 and that’s it….. not a lot else to see or do here unfortunately. But I wanted to share this description with you and now I’m going to buy some doughnuts, have a coffee and relax.
And yeah, very sad about the shopping centre. But these shopping centres, you know, they’re always marketed very well. This one’s called the Piazza, which makes it sound Italian. They always give them Italian names to make them sound glamorous. But once you go inside. Oh, no. Awful.
Well It’s windy, the rain is coming, so I’m going to have a coffee. Bye.