Late yesterday afternoon as we were looking for a dinner restaurant, Eloïse stopped in her tracks and pulled me back to show me something in a shop. I would personally describe this place as a one-stop shop for budding hookers, but to Eloïse it was a store full of beautiful clothes and accessories.
She had her eye on the headband rack and one particular bejewelled monstrosity. She begged me to buy it but there was just no way that I was going to and I told her that she could feel free to buy it with her piggybank money. We were in a hurry to find our dinner so I dragged her whining out of the shop and repeatedly explained to her that she could buy it herself. Once she finally understood that we would give her the money and then she would just take it out of her piggybank to pay us back when we got home she calmed down. I guess at first she just thought that I was being a real bitch who was restricting her to an impossible option, since her piggybank is hundreds of miles away.
The hairband cost 2 pounds and we tried to explain that that was a small but not insignificant portion of her own personal fortune of about 30 Euros, all of which (and the piggybank to hold it) has come to her by way of the very generous Opa Tony. She has yet to spend a penny of her own money but we have talked on numerous occasions of starting to give her an allowance. It just has never panned out because there’s not that much that she wants that is both cheap enough for her to afford and something that we’re not prepared to buy for her.
We encouraged her to shop around and make a good choice and got her on board with that plan. From the moment she woke up this morning she talked of little other than our shopping plans today. At breakfast she received her first instalment of pocket money, which will theoretically be provided at the rate of 1 Euro per week. Her sucker of a father gave her 2 pounds, though, as back pay for last week because “he’s been intending to start giving her pocket money for a while” and in pounds because we’re in Scotland.
By the mid-afternoon we finally made our way to the shopping street and found both an Accessorize and a claire’s. Upon reflection it occurred to me that the hairbands at the slut shop were probably all adult-sized and therefore unsuitable so we didn’t go back there.
It became clear to me long ago that Eloïse has gotten her fashion sense from someone other than me. She clearly has also come by a love of shopping from some unknown source. I suppose that could be down to Papa, but he likes to shop for quite different things than she does. The Accessorize had a huge little girl section and she was like a pig in shit looking at all the hair stuff, junk jewellery, blingy shoes and whatnot. I was pleased when I was able to encourage her to focus on the 1/2 off rack. claire’s also had lots of little girl stuff, but it was more character-based and junky. We had a narrow miss with a horribly cheesy tiara for 3 pounds 50, but thankfully we encouraged her that it was impractical and that Lukie was likely to break it.
In the end we went back to Accessorize and got a rather tasteful headband with a shimmery butterfly for 2 pounds 50 from the 1/2 off rack. (She used the 2 pounds from this morning and will owe us 50 Eurocents from her piggybank when we get home — no currency conversion happening here.) Given how shy she is we were very surprised when she went up to the counter herself and handled the transaction on her own. Her adherence to socially-accepted norms while doing this was less than perfect, but it was good enough and we proud. The headband is “blueish-green,” Eloïse’s new favorite color. Pink is so last week.
