Shopping is a necessary evil at the best of times, so if you have a choice to not go, why would you?

Well, for starters, it was pretty hot last Sunday afternoon and the lawn needed mowing, so any excuse to avoid that chore in airconditioned comfort.

Plus it was International Women's Day and a case could be mounted for doing the thing men are constantly bagged for not doing.

And that's being there, for the family ... in air-conditioned comfort, ie, not mowing.

Despite this worthy commitment, the female-dominated family unit made sounds this particular afternoon that they didn't want me there by saying subtle things like, "Why are you coming?"

I'll tell you why. The mission statement was to drain credit card reward points.

All those years of flashing the magic plastic were about to come to a head.

And man foolishly thought he might join in the spending spree.

But of course there is a pecking order to these things, and he quickly found himself down the bottom of it, becoming, to paraphrase the old joke about the penis, that useless thing that hangs off the end of a family unit in a department store.

That is, a man.

Which is hardly fair because in the past man had shown he has shopping skills.

Man can hold bags while stuff is tried on.

Man can pick out out clothes that define what people really want - that is, the opposite of what man picks out.

And if all else fails, man can pay.

Well, anyone can pay, but it makes man feel good if he can do something useful.

Particularly if you pat him on the head.

But early on it was suggested these skills would not be enough that afternoon, and that maybe it would be better if man took his skills somewhere else.

(Apparently man's presence was affecting the vibe.)

Which is perhaps understandable when you're a middle-aged bloke in a dress shop. Unless your name's Gok.

And so it was with a touch of the David Attenboroughs that lion man was ordered out of the pride by the lioness and her cub, and scampered off to the games shop, where other lion men were congregating with their goofy kids doing their bit on International Women's Day.

That is, being there rather than somewhere else ruining the shopping.

Raw.

Funny how words can sound the same yet have different meanings when you're talking lions and lost pride.

Particularly in a games shop where, in an attempt to look like you know what you're doing, you pick up the first board game that's comes to hand, and it turns out to be that saucy version of Monopoly.

Of all things you could randomly pick out.

It would have been OK if you weren't standing right next to a young kiddie playing with a yo-yo near his dad, who was looking at you strange. Not ideal.

Lion man needed to protect his own pride now so he high-tailed it out of the game shop back to the other pride, quietly hoping no one called security.

By that stage the other pride had moved on to shoes, so man put on his cloak of invisibility and stood there looking brain-dead.

But you can only watch people put on so many pairs of shoes before you think, in the tradition of Freddie Mercury, you want to break free.

Lion man gets restless (read self-conscious) and yearns to wander.

Unfortunately I wandered straight into the female underwear section. Not a good look. Particularly after the game shop.

It was at that moment I bumped into a female friend from work and she seemed to sum up the situation pretty quick.

"Hi Simon, After a bra?"

I explained myself and got the sense that she'd seen this sort of behaviour before. Hopefully not on CCTV footage.

Which begged the question as we exchanged goodbyes, "Where to wander next?"

More importantly, where had the pride wandered? Take your eye off them a second and they disappear.

Lion man had to use his wits. He had freedom of choice. He'd chosen to come shopping, rather than mow, right? And now he chose to believe the pride were in the the fitting rooms trying on clothes.

So he hung around the entrance a good 10 minutes unsettling customers before realising the pride weren't in the fitting room at all.

They were over in another other section of the store continuing to ransack racks.

He couldn't help wondering if the pride noticed what lion man had been doing.

I'm pretty sure they did, but I reckon they were happy because I was over there while they were over here not bothering them.

Later in the afternoon I got my 15 seconds of shopping fame.

Items were stripped off the clearance rack and we headed to the fitting room.

Such a quiet place of contemplation ... until we arrived.

"Nah", "nah", "yup", "maybe", "ugh, gees you're getting fat".

There went the pride again. Talk about a lot of work for few rewards points.

And as far as a shopping experience went, man wasn't sold.