It’s just sooooo predictable. It’s as sure as the late return of Harry Potter books and the illustrated pages of Alex Comfort’s magnum opus being ripped out. If there is one thing we can all rely on for early January, it’s bad weather, rubbish songs on the hit parade and high street chains moaning about how awful their Christmas has been.
With cash dribbling from their pockets, we have a succession of economists and retail analysts bleating on about how profits are down, sales have not matched expectations and more stock has been put into the January sales. By stock, of course, I refer rows and rows of cheap designer goods fashioned by 4 year-olds in Asian sweat shops – not our lovingly collected stock of the world’s great literature neatly shelved for the entertainment and education of the people, by the people, for the people – and laboriously checked annually.