12 days of Christmas – The Sales
This year, the seasonal consumer glut known as the ‘sales’ apparently started on Christmas Day, with people going on-line and purchasing stuff. Whether this was intentional, or simply a you-are-fooling-nobody tactic used when you have forgotten to get somebody a prezzie and hope that an e mail from Amazon telling them that their Harry Potter gift set is in the post will do the trick is open to debate, but it does mean that we don’t even have hiatus anymore between mad-arse shopping in the run up to Christmas Day and people camping outside the shops in London waiting for them to open on Boxing Day so they can shop again.
I’m a bit of a last minute Christmas shopper. I like to hear the merry bells on the muzak system and the merry bells of the tills and to be wished a ‘merry Christmas’ when buying soap or something. I also like that feeling of panic in the pit of your stomach when you realise that all shops have sold out of what it was your wife has been asking you to get for the last month and you’ve been putting off.
Though to be honest, I think shops selling out of stuff is a thing of the past. Santa might still rely on hand-crafting and elf labour, but then the bugger does have a magical sleigh to make deliveries, the shops rely on the sort of stock control system that requires computing power that would wrestle HAL 9000 one handed and still have time to beat SKYNET at chess.
My family have long learned the lesson of buying gifts when and where they see them throughout the year and then putting them away until December. This is not a system that works well for everybody, by which I mean me. By which I mean by December I’ve forgotten where I hid the stuff throughout the year, meaning panic buying at the last minute and what can only be described as an ‘anger episode’ in January when I find the sodding things I hid in June.
My family are also somewhat traditional, which is why on the day following Boxing Day we hit the shops in search of bargains. As a result, I now own two rather spiffy new tee shirts, one black, one white. The rest of the family were a bit more adventurous and dive into the ‘sale’ racks like explorers plunging into jungle.
Sale shopping is not for the faint hearted – putting it in a film context I’d say the whole experience was a cross between the opening of ‘Gladiator’ and the final battle in ‘Lord of the Rings’ – except Orcs are somewhat better looking than an enraged woman when you’ve just grabbed the last size ten cocktail dress off of the rack.
I’m a bit of a last minute Christmas shopper. I like to hear the merry bells on the muzak system and the merry bells of the tills and to be wished a ‘merry Christmas’ when buying soap or something. I also like that feeling of panic in the pit of your stomach when you realise that all shops have sold out of what it was your wife has been asking you to get for the last month and you’ve been putting off.
Though to be honest, I think shops selling out of stuff is a thing of the past. Santa might still rely on hand-crafting and elf labour, but then the bugger does have a magical sleigh to make deliveries, the shops rely on the sort of stock control system that requires computing power that would wrestle HAL 9000 one handed and still have time to beat SKYNET at chess.
My family have long learned the lesson of buying gifts when and where they see them throughout the year and then putting them away until December. This is not a system that works well for everybody, by which I mean me. By which I mean by December I’ve forgotten where I hid the stuff throughout the year, meaning panic buying at the last minute and what can only be described as an ‘anger episode’ in January when I find the sodding things I hid in June.
My family are also somewhat traditional, which is why on the day following Boxing Day we hit the shops in search of bargains. As a result, I now own two rather spiffy new tee shirts, one black, one white. The rest of the family were a bit more adventurous and dive into the ‘sale’ racks like explorers plunging into jungle.
Sale shopping is not for the faint hearted – putting it in a film context I’d say the whole experience was a cross between the opening of ‘Gladiator’ and the final battle in ‘Lord of the Rings’ – except Orcs are somewhat better looking than an enraged woman when you’ve just grabbed the last size ten cocktail dress off of the rack.
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