People queueing at 4am on the day after Christmas, when they should be sleeping off their overindulgence of food and alcohol. Grabbing clothes off rails regardless of size or even whether they like it. The frenzy that comes with the thought that no one else must have what you covet, and you will do anything to get your hands on it. Fist-fights breaking out over a pair of trousers that you will wear once then decide you can't ever wear again because it's last year's fashion (which is why they're in the sale anyway). And for that matter, the stupidity of fashion "seasons" which render clothes obsolete within 6 months.
Like I said, I don't get it.
There was a phone-in on Five Live this morning which also had BBC reporters around the country interviewing retailers and shoppers.
The retailers were bigging it all up, saying how wonderful they were being to the population by discounting their goods so much at this difficult time.
The shoppers were for the most part falling for it, proclaiming wide-eyed how much they had saved - not realising that in order to save lots, you have to spend lots. My jaw hit the floor at one woman who had bought some new bedding, as she explained how she replaces all of her bedding every year. For the love of god, why?
The phone-in folks were better value for money. The reason they had time to phone in to a radio show was because they weren't at the shops. They were, for the most part, calling the bargain-hunters fools.
One man had a good rant about materialistic consumerism, another woman had a go about the planet's finite resources and don't we have enough Stuff already.
But the comment of the morning belonged to another woman who sighed a lot:
"We spend Christmas Day receiving loads of presents and then less than 24 hours later we go mad trying to buy even more unnecessary crap. Aren't the presents enough?"For myself, I saved 100% - I didn't buy anything.
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