Peter Harvey - Looking at the lighter side of life

It's not much to ask.

Whenever our partners go into a changing room with two, three or four garments, in the hope that they will like the look of one of them, it is reasonable to suppose that the trying-on is going to take a certain amount of time.

Some of the clothes cannot be assessed in just one try-on. They have to be tried on twice. If the tryer-on can't make up her mind between two items, they both have to be tried on twice. Sometimes three times.

In the time-honoured process that is always involved in a trying-on session, our loved ones will pop out of the changing room at some point wearing one of the garments and will say to us: "What do you think to this? Does it look all right round the back? Does this colour suit me?"

If, in these circumstances, it is expected of us that we should respond with an appropriate and well considered opinion, we need to be in a restul and relaxed frame of mind.

Only in this mode can we reply: "It looks absolutely lovely, darling. The colour's exactly right for you, it fits perfectly and it's very slimming. It will go perfectly with your new skirt. I think it's a winner."

But if there are no seats for us to sit on and we have waited for ten minutes in a standing position, looking after three full shopping bags (and sometimes a handbag as well), with passing males showing their sympathy by smiling in a resigned way, our reaction will not be as appropriate or well considered.

It might even be off-hand.

Weary, and with heavy-lidded eyes, fed up with getting sympathetic smiles from passing males, beginning to get hungry, and over-burdened by the lingering thought that time passes very slowly in these circumstances, we might even make an unwise response, such as: "Have you nearly finished?" or something else that is just as guaranteed to disrupt harmony between male and female.

And all this because there isn't something for us to sit on.

Do the managements of our stores not realise how responsible they are for disharmony of this kind? Or do they not care?

Do they not want us to be happy?

Is it not true that happy customers are more likely to spend money than unhappy customers?

Do they know how relatively cheap seats are?

If they are doubtful about the answers to any of these questions I recommend they take a look at the photographs in a new book, Sheffield Shops and Shopping, by Ruth Harman, published by Tempus.

It's crammed with delightful photographs of how Sheffield shops looked, inside and out, from about 1900 on.

They will probably notice that a lot of the interior photographs show chairs for customers all over the shop.

They show customers sitting down as they look at things they might be buying.

And in the ladies' fashion departments chairs are scattered about in all directions.

Why not now?