I made my first visit to the Apple Store on Regent Street yesterday. Erica and I had decided that we would get out of 27RG and do something other than work - given half a chance both of us would have been at our computers working just like any other day. So, it seemed a good opportunity to take my Airport Express (which has failed) to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store to see if it could be fixed.

First thing is to check if the store is open today. So, online and check. Yes, it’s open, but apparently no slots at the Genius Bar. I wait until 10.00am (the store’s opening time) and then try again. I write my spiel about the Airport Express and send it off. I find I’ve been booked for a slot at 2.15pm - and I’ve made my booking as soon as I can after the store opens. Actually, I could have had a 10.05 slot, but it was already 10 and it would have taken me 20 minutes to get to the Store from Rutland Gate. It’s a bit of a bugger, this. Erica and I had thought to go and have lunch in Greenwich, having been to the Apple Store first. But never mind…

Erica and I take the Piccadilly Line to Piccadilly Circus and walk north along Regent Street. We stop and have a pizza on the way and then get to the store about 1.20pm. Walk in - what an amazing store! It’s completely open plan, spacious, and packed with people playing with Macs, trying out iPods, picking up bits of gear and software. And there are free iLife demonstrations going on in the theatre area. It is one extraordinary marketing achievement by Apple. Very stylish, but we decide we can’t spend the best part of an hour in there waiting for my slot at the Genius Bar - which has plenty of business.

We turn left out of the store and get to Oxford Circus. Oxford Circus and Oxford Street are just heaving. It may be Good Friday, but you can see what our real religion is now. I know it’s a commonplace to say this, but the shrines of the 21st century religion of Shop-Ping are doing great business. The devotees are making sacrifice of their hard earned cash and gaining merit (otherwise known as getting points on your store card) while carrying off objects of veneration - clothes from Laura Ashley or Dickins & Jones or Liberty, jewellery, shoes from Barkers…

And there’s time for a quick glimpse of an area that was sacred to us baby boomers in the 1960s, Carnaby Street.

As we reach Oxford Circus, we can see that there’s a parade or march or something waiting at the traffic lights. As the lights change, the march, lead by a police van, comes turns into Regent Street. It turns out to be a double line of Hare Krishna devotees dancing and chanting as they hold up the traffic in this very busy area.

The devotees in their saffron robes at the front are dancing and chanting enthusiastically, but the further back in the line people are, the less enthusiastic and, to be frank, the more embarrassed they look. Not all are wearing saffron-coloured robes; there’s even one or two in jeans. And right at the back, there’s a four-wheeled cart, pulled by two men, carrying a large papier mache bird (or something of the kind). The bird is under a shelter with four columns and one of those Indian-style domes made out of a shiny fabric. The strangest thing about this is that there’s a many in a beany hat sitting behind the bird’s tale and he’s pulling on cords to make the bird’s wings flap.

It was a small parade and when it was gone, I could hear some Christian preacher shouting the odds on salvation through a megaphone somewhere around Oxford Circus.

So there you have it. Ours certainly is a multi-faith society: Shop-Ping, Hare Krishna, evangelical Christianity all within a small area at the same time - and all observed by two Baha’is. And of the four, Shop-Ping takes the prize for having by far the greatest number of devotees.

But wait, now that I come to think about it, a Salvation Army band marched south along Regent Street while I was back in the Apple Store at about 2.00pm.

Back in the Apple Store, I eventually get my turn at the Genius Bar. It seems that my Airport Express is shot. How long have I had it? More than a year, I think. The genius who’s dealing with me taps the object’s serial number into her PowerBook and tells me that I bought it in July. So, hooray, hooray, I can have a replacement under warranty. But there aren’t any in stock, so I have to wait while she fill out some humungously long online form which will allow her to order one in for me. She must have taken 10 or 15 minutes to fill out the form, while I sat on the stool of repentance at the Genius Bar.

And then Erica and I are free to go and do something more Bank Holiday-ish. Central Line to Bank and then Docklands Light Railway to Cutty Sark. Greenwich is heaving. We find our way into the covered market and it’s a treasure trove of delights. Erica manages to buy a small leather handbag of the kind she’s been looking for for ages - and it’s only six quid. It’s exactly right for occasions when she doesn’t want to take her large bag, the one that holds her life in its many pockets.

I buy a leather case for my business cards. Three quid and I’ve been looking for something of the kind for months.

A cup of tea and a piece of carrot cake and then we do a quick tour round the stalls. There seem to be quite a lot of stalls selling Thai handicrafts and there are the usual stalls of jewellery, candles, prints, photographs, leather goods, and general junk. The place is crowded, but the crowd is in a genial good humour.

We each have a glass (plastic, actually , but who’s counting?) of apple juice and ginger at a stall that turns fruit and ginger into juice before your very eyes. The stall borders on a narrow alleyway with shops. As we wait for our juice - the kind of thing, Erica tells me, Tom and Vicky serve for breakfast - there’s a commotion in the alleyway. A gang of young men in their 20s, shouting and chanting, come through. The guy out front is shushing people, but behind him his chums are clearly in a kind of alcoholic good humour. One of them, seeing the fruit juice stall, raises his hands above his head, claps his hands several times and chants ‘Orange juice’ - it’s a football crowd kind of chant: ‘orange joo–ooce’ on a falling cadence. The noisy young men stop at the pub at the corner of the covered market. Clearly they don’t want to run out of the fuel for their aggressive bonhomie.

You have to wonder, what do they think they’re doing? Clearly it means something to them within their group; it’s something to do with group solidarity; it must have something to do with the kind of mind-befuddlement that comes from taking a drop too much. But to me, completely outside that world, that framework of meaning, it just looks entirely childish and ridiculous. Perhaps almost all human behaviour can look ridiculous to an outside observer who doesn’t identify with what’s going on. The Hare Krishna parade looked to me rather sad and embarrassed - but I am sure that it had meaning to those involved, since it presumably is part of what gives their life meaning.

And the shoppers on Oxford Street and Regent Street, what do they think they’re doing? Does buying things give life meaning? How has shopping come to assume such a huge importance in our lives? I mean, shopping which goes far beyond buying the necessities and a few luxuries. And I’m not immune to this. My home is full of things I’ve bought and which, in the end are useless or I dont’ really want them.

Into Greenwich Park, where there are people as far as the eye can see: families and groups picnicking, boys and young men playing football; kids doing roly-polies down any convenient slope; dogs chasing balls; young parents with their babies in prams and push-chairs; even one young lad climbing a tree and then calling his parents to rescue him. And all presided over, in the evening sunshine, by the Greenwich Observatory, with its time ball in the down position, looking down onto the Royal Naval College, the maritime museum and even the Dome.