We have just emerged from what seems to have become an annual bout of complete idiocy, under the name of “Black Friday”. There are few times during the year when I manage to bask in a glow of superiority. It passes my understanding how it has become possible to persuade people to buy things just because it is affirmed that they are cheaper than usual, when they don’t need them. Surely people are only going to buy things they actually need?
Then two thoughts passed through my mind. Perhaps this is a way of looking at the world only experienced these days by those of us who lived during the Second World War, and the following years of shortage and rationing. We couldn’t afford the things we did need let alone the things we didn’t need.
This was followed by the dreadful realisation that maybe my actions are not quite as virtuous as I might like to think. Let’s face it, how many artists are capable of visiting an art materials shop and emerging from it with only those things they actually need?
I’m afraid that we have here an example of the old English folk saying, and it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black.