‘Tis the season of ‘stuffocation’

A wartime buddy of my Dad’s waited to see the gifts displayed at the reception so he could fill in the gap.

He couldn’t see any cutlery, so gave us a flash stainless steel set decorated with a fetching daisy pattern, not knowing my brotherin-law was sending a set from England.

And the orange and turquoise floral sheets were not quite to our taste even in the post-psychedelic 70’s, but the quality was great and, 43 years later, one or two pairs are still doing duty in a family bach.

When we moved from Nelson to Auckland in the late 1980s, one of my first outings was to the enormous St Luke’s shopping mall.

After 10 years of secondhand goods and Nelson’s conservative and pricey retail emporia, the mall seemed like a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of treasures, a vast airy paradise of exotic, bright and shiny things.

Like most New Zealanders from the regions in those years, I was an impressionable retail innocent.

Fast-forward to December 2017 and our visit to Albany’s retail monolith.

We got in and out as fast as we could, having strategized using the internet to find the best deal on the lurid Disney Princess dress-up costume granddaughter Emma had set her heart on.

Driving away, mission accomplished, the experience felt like a close encounter with psychic peril. But why?

Is it the acoustics, the harsh lighting, the windowless interior that leads consumers like sheep

The Christmas retail frenzy is upon us and the symptoms of ’stuffocation’ have never been so apparent.