The Last Days of November

It's hard to believe that we're nearly at the end of November already.  You can practically hear the year winding down.  I always feel that November is the last 'proper' month of the year, as December is dominated by Christmas (or Winterval as we like to call it here at Sleaze Towers).  From now until January it feels as if it isn't worthwhile starting anything, as any new project will be interrupted by the festive season and nobody's interested anyway as they are too fixated on doing their Christmas shopping.  Speaking of which, this year my enjoyment of this latter part of November has been marred by the proliferation of so-called 'Black Friday' sales.  As with many other things, these are an American import.  Now, over in the States the post-Thanksgiving 'Black Friday' sales make a certain amount of sense - the previous day, Thanksgiving itself, is a public holiday and many Americans either have the next day off also, or take it as leave, to make long weekend.  It seems logical, therefore, for retailers to hold sales on the Friday to kick off the Christmas shopping season.

However, here in the UK the corresponding Friday is simply another normal shopping day in a normal working week.  Yesterday wasn't a national holiday.  The Christmas shopping season has been in full swing since at least September.  Most of us visiting a supermarket this Friday are simply trying to do our normal shopping.  However, as I found this afternoon in my post work visit to Sainsburys, today it can't be that simple, because today, apparently, is 'Black Friday'.  Parking at the shopping centre was the first hurdle to overcome, as it was packed full of by the cars of people visiting the other shops there in search of 'Black Friday' bargains, (which, by five o'clock., there aren't going to be many left).  Even once I'd found a space, I had to fight my way into the supermarket, which seemed to be full of an overspill of shoppers who couldn't find anything in the 'Black Friday' sales of the other shops, so decided to pile into the supermarket instead, even though it wasn't participating in any kind of sale.  All I bloody wanted to do was buy three items!  Still, it could have been worse, I could have gone to Asda which, being the UK arm of the evil Wal-Mart corporation, was one of the main offenders in terms of 'Black Friday'.  Apparently in some branches fights broke out over flat screen TVs.  For Christ's sake, can't we leave that sort of stuff for our own New Year's sales, where we traditionally go mad and assault each other over kettles and toasters reduced by fifty percent?