The Metropolis

City Sketch: Pramaggedon at Westfield Stratford's opening day

Mike Pollitt | Tuesday 13 September, 2011 15:32

This picture contains one pram for every six people. Can you find them all?

There were big prams and small prams, three wheelers and four wheel drives. There were green prams that looked like tricycles, and red prams that looked like cars. There were pram jams five vehicles deep that had pedestrians hemmed in like cattle, and speeding prams that left a trail of overrun toes.

I saw one unfortunate lad, a boy rather than a baby, turfed out of his comfort seat to make way for bags of John Lewis homeware. Forced to wander through the melee with the rest of us, he must have cast envious eyes at his contemporaries, raised up above him like Roman nobles in sedan-chairs, oblivious to the curses of the foot propelled passers by.

Westfield Stratford was certainly busy on its opening day. Around the ribbon cutting arena, where Boris Johnson had just given a speech so consumerist its primary motif was the Big Mac Meal, men in suits congratulated each other on the turnout. Regeneration, growth, jobs, money…what was not to love?

But would the crowds stay, and would they spend? The girl at the Caribbean Scene coffee place was confident about business this week, but beyond that not so sure. And though the crowds were big, they carried as many free balloons as they did bags of goods. For many, myself included, this was pure window shopping, a chance to press a nose against the glass and dream of the things they could not have.

In one section, two shops seemed busier than the rest. Office was shifting trainers well enough, but then, as the looting showed, trainers are a gold plated commodity in the urban marketplace. Pandora, a jewellery shop, was also full to bursting, primarily because it was offering free Ferrero Rocher and a glass of warm champagne. So busy did it become that a security guard had enforce one in one out, and staff were sent scrabbling for more chocolate bribes. People really liked getting something for nothing, it seemed. Who knew?

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