About 60 people were injured in Birmingham yesterday after a crowd surge at a free outdoor concert. I maintain it was God’s way of telling them that turning on the Christmas lights in the middle of November is an abomination.
Things were not much better in Reading town centre this morning. After an amusing walk into town where every street corner was punctuated by a broken umbrella, half-stuffed into a bin following yesterdays storm, we found that the lights were up in Broad Street (though not yet on) and every department store was now a gaudy shrine to commercialisation.
What is normally a sedate menswear department in Marks & Spencer is now festooned with tacky Christmas gift displays, usurping about ten racks of smart/casual wear which bridges the divide in M&S between boardroom suits and the sort of thing you’d only wear while yachting in the Lake District with your two Labradors. Those ten racks were the only thing I’d come to look at, so finding instead nothing but crowds of mindless middle-aged mums considering whether to buy their brat a robotic snake for Christmas was somewhat irritating, especially since it was only in menswear because they’d never dare to clear space in the womens’ department for this junk.
Ultimately, I tried on some jackets of a similar cut to what I wanted for size, then traipsed home and ordered online. Is it any wonder the high street is dying?
