Goodwill to All!

My cultural plan for the edification of my sophisticated reader has been stymied on Day Two of the Photographic Week by the refusal of the system to allow me to download photographs, so I will just have to struggle along with mere words.

I will try and download them later, thoughI’m damned if I am going to change this opening; so if you can see any photos in this writing, you will know that the system relented eventually and allowed this user to use it usefully.

Getting up so early certainly does give one a different perspective on life. I had completed the few quotidian tasks that I had set myself by 8.45 am and had a long, long tea break to look forward to!

As usual the disjointed snippets of news that wormed their way into my conscious mind while applying myself to the rigorous intellectual demands of gentle dental abrasion and epidermal laving meant that only a partial element of my natural ire was ignited by the honeyed tones of the Radio 4 announcer and, by the time I had stumbled downstairs to have a cup of coffee (“Not tea, it’s the weekend!”) the more wearisome elements of the world situation had resolved themselves into the burning question which took the form of trying to decided which Tesco biscuits I would buy on my way back from taking Toni to work.

The real trouble about entering Tosco’s at seven in the morning is that the night and early morning vultures have picked the ‘Reduced’ cabinet clean and the back room boys have not restocked the shelves with exotic bargains of foods you never buy and which are, consequently, hard to resist. Leaving the shop with a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk seems to be spitting directly at the whole ethos that has made Britain Great and kept the people poor!

Another problem associated with browsing through the deserted aisles in the early morning is that it does nothing to prepare you for the full horrors of the ‘School Out Shop On’ experience if you forget your schedule and make inappropriate visits to the store: mothers, children and other humans fill your path and your ears with their very tangible presence. It is at times like this that you remember old novels which frequently described characters who ‘laid about them with riding crops’ with efficiency and determination clearing paths though protesting humanity to get to their rightful destinations. Or perhaps it’s just me who noticed those incidents? Further, not fully realising that it was always the baddies who behaved like that and not the clean cut heroes and heroines. Well, I’ve always had a grudging admiration for Satan and ‘Paradise Lost’ and Iago in ‘Othello.’

In the on going battle between Owner and Customer Tesco has taken another psychological step against the natural cynicism of the purchaser: they have taken to Odd Price Labelling. This consists in marking the price of an article as £3.47 or at some things which are marked at 71p. What is the twisted logic behind this? Have people finally realised that £4.99 is, in fact, only a single penny short of a fiver? Have they (we) finally realised that in spite of the ninety-nine part of the cost we still respond to the price as being substantially less than five because the first digit is a four? Surely not! I’m taking in by it all the time and I have taught recognition of this technique as part of the necessary analysis to tackle Paper II in English GCSE to Year 10 pupils.

Obviously knowing what retailers do does not make you immune from falling for the techniques. So, if the old 99 trick still works, why change to 47 or 71? There must be deeper and more sinister reasons. Let’s get the positive spin out of the way first: we can, I take it, dismiss the idea that this odd sum of pence is a result of cutting the price back to the lowest possible sum and when you can reasonably cut no further, that is the price you charge the consumer? Facile, childish and jejune.

We must look deeper. Surely this is another example of the double bluff: you think it is a cynical attempt to get you to believe that Tesco is a charitable institution; but if they were that cynical then they would be still at the Old 99 trick; but they aren’t so they must be being truthful and it is the cheapest they can do it; therefore you buy and are grateful.

Think about it: say Tesco could make something and make a profit and the cost came to £1.99; that price seems calculated, but, if you were to charge £2.23 then that price seems real and fair AND Tesco could make an extra 24p profit.

Now let’s get one thing straight. I am not for a moment saying that Tesco (or any other noble purveyor of comestibles) would, are or have been doing this; I just say it could be an explanation – and one which could get GCSE candidates a few extra marks if they were able to express this in cogent English in their English examination.

On the run up to Christmas when punters seem to lose any concept of sufficiency and act like hyper active consumer driven sheep on acid, believing that, if they don’t buy something immediately (and in bulk) it will disappear from the shelves and NEVER EVER be made again let alone stocked, the subtle gambits of canny shops like all supermarkets are directed towards tempting (no, forcing!) hapless punters to buy ever more surreal gifts for Christmas.

Gifts priced under the magic £5 limit are stretching even my fairly elastic credulity to breaking point. I know people who have never played, will never play and know no one who plays golf who scoop up composite golfing gifts (you know, the ones that look like golfing 'Lucky Bags' filled with artefacts made of plastic, metal, rubber, glass and cloth, looking like a particularly vicious form of Kim's Memory Game) from the shelves marked ‘Seasonal Presents’ with the jubilant exultation of Carter at the tomb of Tut!

“Wonderful things!” be damned; it’s incomprehensible rubbish that barely make it to Boxing Day and was probably thrown out with the packing paper on the previous day of mild family disputes and serious drinking.

As you can see, I am gearing myself up for the festive season: Peace and goodwill to all will be my motto.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

This picture is my favourite from the pick (pun intended) of the crop today. I have to admit that I did not actually go further than about ten steps from my front door for these, but I do promise to go a little further afield tomorrow, while still staying within the two minute radius!