It’s Black Friday tomorrow. You know, that special day when people beat the excrement out of each other in order to secure a new TV that has been reduced in price by £20. I think I might just avoid the shops altogether.
Black Friday has become an integral part of the British way of life. It has been around since, I think, 2013 and I don’t know how we ever managed without it. Tomorrow, “experts” believe sales will top £1 billion. I don’t think I could be any less excited.
Mind you, I detest shopping at the best of times. If I visit, say, Cabot Circus in Bristol, there is barely a single shop in which I have any interest. If you are not a fashion guru – and no one could look at me and call me one of those – then there is precious little of interest. The same with the Mall at Cribbs Causeway. Once I have finished in HMV, that’s pretty well it for me. I might grab an unnecessary snack from Spud U Like, but otherwise places like River Island and Marks and Spencer are for someone – anyone – else. (Although I am increasingly elderly, I still think I am too young to shop in Marks!)
I probably have all the electrical items I need, I have a reasonable selection of unfashionable clothes; there is little else to convince me to leave my front door. And nowadays, there is an alternative: the internet. The most arduous aspect to internet shopping is collecting items from the local royal mail sorting office when I have not been in when they called. Internet shopping is far more convenient, it’s far less stressful and it’s often cheaper. What’s not to love?
The darker side of the human spirit will on show tomorrow, though, what I call the “Spirit of Thatcher”. The old bat herself died some years ago but her grim legacy of greed remains. Every time I see mob rule in a large store, with violence breaking out, I think to myself: “Oh how much Maggie would have loved this. It’s everything she always believed in. If you are old, frail, sick or infirm, you would be buried at the bottom. It’s called self-reliance. Just worry about yourself and sod everyone else. I want this and I want it now and if I have to kick you out of your wheelchair to get it, then it’s your fault for being disabled. Bloody scroungers.”
It all just proves to me now easy it is to manipulate people. Black Friday didn’t exist until recently but there will be people tonight convinced they will get bargains, things they probably don’t need, but they will buy them because they can. But then, Trick or Treat didn’t exist until someone thought they could make a few bob in the UK. Money – and greed – makes the world go round. Me? I’m going to the pub. Are you coming?
