There is an old poem about After The Ball, describing how the Belle of the Ball takes her appearance apart - down to the wooden leg and glass eyes, commenting on the illusion of her perfection. It always amused me as a child, and now that the wrapping paper is cleared and binned, and Christmas dinner sufficiently digested for me to move and think again, I'm left with that deflated sense of inevitability – this comes round every year, this mass of hysteria, excitement, endless food and drink and sociability, and far more packaging around everything than necessary. And now all the sales are on. Now everything we just spend money on is half price or less, and it makes me wonder how much the margin is pushed up before Christmas, if prices can be so severely slashed straight after. And why do we bother with presents on the day when it would save so much to buy them even one day late. Yes, it is about the day itself, but when I walk – or attempt to – down Oxford Street on Boxing Day, I have to wonder when we all went so insane at the prospect of a bargain, and how the hell anyone has any money left after all the pre-Christmas consumer madness.
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