Shopping centres suck...
I was giving my undivided attention to the dreaded school shoes shop one day at a particularly well known establishment. After literally ten minutes of patiently observing several very similar pairs of generic black shoes I decided I’d wait outside and let the head of logistics take this situation to its conclusion.
Sat outside, trying to connect to some free wi-fi, I glanced to my left and right. At both sides were lone males, fiddling with their phones and regularly glancing into the shoe shop, probably awaiting the same signal as I was; ‘good to go’.
I extended my gaze further along to find more of the same; Men perhaps going through the same process outside the shop selling a million different rubbers, rulers and note pads or the one where you buy, name and stuff a lifeless teddy bear carcass and then continue to spend another hour dressing it up in some weird outfit like Yoda, the Hulk or Boris Johnson.
So, after consulting with my 11yr old daughter who has the imagination of J.R.Tolkien, we came up with ‘Bored Dad’: An extremely stylish coffee shop with acres of comfortable seating, free wi-fi, reasonably priced beverages and large TV screens hooked up to cordless headphones so you could tune in to your preferred media. It will a have 'pay by sofa' app available with a bored dad payment card.
‘Bored Dad’ would be sited exactly half way down the shopping centre: a retreat where we could easily be located when it was time to go, time for lunch or time to pay for something. Every major city shopping centre could have one.
Unfortunately this kind of venture takes big bucks, so at this point and until Richard Branson contacts me I’ve just started ‘Bored Dad.co.uk’ as an outlet for dad stuff: ideas, views, sarcasm and humour.