"Black Friday starts six months ago and goes on into the new year." A bit of a paraphrase of Ken Bruce on Greatest Hits Radio.
And how right he is. Do you remember the days when a sale really was a sale?:It occurred just once a year and was keenly anticipated. There were genuine bargains to be had.
Now we have sales all the year round and many of them are a waste of time. Black Friday is full of bargains that aren't really bargains and no better than prices offered many other times during the year.
I am always shouting at the television. You know the kind of thing. The TV says:
"But hurry because this best ever sale only lasts until midnight tomorrow."
And I shout at the TV: "yes but it will be followed by an even better sale."
Nowadays you shouldn't pay full price for anything but then you really don't know whether the pre-sale price has been artificially enlarged. All a company has to do is offer a product for a very high price for one day. Then they can quote this as the pre-sale price. Or am I just being too cynical? Before you answer that remember that I worked in marketing for a few years.
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Does anyone do the postcode lottery? I'm confused by the odds. Just how many postcodes are there in the UK. So I Googled the question or should that be Googled the answer and it seems to be 1.7 million with each postcode covering an average of 15 properties.
I guess the chances of winning are better than those of the National Lottery.
And so back to my second favourite comment of the day.
At the Forget Not Cafe we had a really interesting talk from Georgette Vale about Christmas crafting and her collection of Christmas cribs. Georgette has rather a large collection of Christmas cribs.
So Georgette said: "The difference between collecting and hoarding is organisation."
Think about that one.
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In the evening we had tickets for Cinema City. Members get regular free showings. Now as you know in the past I regularly reviewed cinema, theatre, books, music and TV for the local Media. So when I see any form of art I have a tendency to mentally review everything. Sometimes I disagree with the reviews of others.
Such was the case as the other threequarters dragged me out to see The Eternal Daughter. The film was a mild Gothic horror style film starring Tilda Swinton in a dual role of playing a middle aged woman and her mother.
It was without doubt one of the worst films I have ever sat through. The acting was wooden, the script seemed to have been written by a seven year old, what there was of a plot was unfathomable and the whole thing crawled along.
I sat there wondering when the end would come and put me out of my misery and just knowing that there wouldn't be a satisfactory ending or any explanation as to what we had been watching.
I just kept wondering what the point of it all was and at the end realised there wasn't any point to it at all.
And of course I was completely wrong as the critics seem to have loved it. You will probably love it. Go and see it if you get the chance and tell me my assessment was wrong and that the best acting performance was not by the dog.
Getting into Norwich was difficult as a lorry had broken down on the A47 and diverted traffic was coming out way. As a result we missed all the pre film adverts so I suppose every cloud has a silver lining.
Once again I didn't find Norwich at night very pleasant. I have said this before but we both find the place quite seedy and rather threatening when it gets dark. Does anyone else who knows the city feel the same way?