The Season of Christmas Shopping Madness

'Tis the season of Christmas shopping madness.  Thankfully, I've got most of mine done already, but in the process I've had to brave the lunacy that reigns at this time of year in Crapchester's shopping centres.  It's bad enough at the best of times, but when the festive  madness takes hold of the shopping hordes then trying to buy anything frequently becomes a fight for survival.  One of my perrennial pet hates at this and any other time of year are children's pushchairs.  Don't misunderstand me - I have no problem with pushchairs when they are being used for their proper purpose: the transportation of small children.  What I object to is when people use them as weapons to ram their way through crowded shopping centres and supermarket aisles.  They're so fucking aggressive!  Not to mention self-righteous, clearly implying that because they have children they are somehow superior to us sad single bastards trying to buy our week's worth of frozen TV dinners.  Except, of course, that under these circumstances their child is rarely in the pushchair - that's filled with shopping whilst the kid is being carried on one of those sling things.  I honestly don't know why they don't go all the way and fix bloody great blades, Bodicea-style, to the wheel hubs and just cut the rest of us down as they sweep through the aisles.

The only thing worse than the pushchairs are those bloody mobility scooters - apparently the only disability or infirmity one has to possess to get to use one of these is to be grossly overweight.  At least, that seems to be the case here in Crapchester.   They go speeding around the shopping centre, forcing people to jump out of their way for fear that they'll get their ankles broken in a collision, (the bumpers are neatly arranged to be at ankle height, where they can do the most damage).  This time of year they are even more dangerous as the fat bastards driving them are usually drunk on chocolate liquers and even more reckless.  Actually, some of them brazenly weave around on their mobility scooters swigging from vodka bottles and puffing on fags - no wonder they can't bloody walk.  In recent years I've found an increasing hazard posed by elderly wheelchair bound people being pushed around the shops by relatives,  I suppose this is really just a variation on the pushchair business, except the wheelchair makes a bigger battering ram.  Also, the infirm OAP always stays in the wheelchair - they just have all the shopping piled on top of them.  I sometimes wonder if the people pushing them around really are relatives, or whether they've just gone to some care home and picked up some OAPS too senile to realise they are being kidnapped for the purposes of smashing through crowded shops.  I'm convinced that sooner or later someone is going to use one of these wheelchair bound OAPs for ram raiding - waiting until the shops shut then shoving them through the shop window at high speed.  They'd probably leave them there to be arrested by the police after grabbing as much loot as they could.  The bastards.