All those people out shopping on the day of the public sector pension strike were mainly doing it to keep the children occupied on their day off school.
The town shopping centre has been opening late every Wednesday during December. Although not by any means deserted, you could not have called it busy - until last night. School officially out now, & so were the crowds, respectably, though not staggeringly, laden with carrier bags.
A relatively small but very impressive a capella choir provided arrangements of Christmas songs whose harmonies & intricately intertwined voices were a joy. They did not seem to be collecting money for anything – at least I could not see any boxes when I went over.
Shops seem to have been much more discreet altogether this year with their Christmas music. When it has been playing at all it has been much more quiet, often real old fashioned songs which were around even before I was born, rather than the more raucous, bounce around & spend, spend, spend we had grown used to.
This noontime, for the first time in a long time, the bus was held up by a tail back of traffic trying to get into Sainsbury’s car park.
The one big decision left is whether to finish the food shopping tomorrow, or take the risk of finding bare shelves on Saturday in shops unrestocked because they are going to be closed for the next two days.
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No jangle bells
No jangle bells
