Remember when ... A sobering reminder on Boxing Day

RUSSELL LEADBETTER

IT was a couple of days after Christmas 1970, and the sales in the big shops and stores were in full swing.

In Glasgow, more than 200 bargain-hunters queued bright and early outside the C&A store in Argyle Street. One of the first to enter was a housewife from Toryglen, who was looking for a new coat.

“Wait till my husband looks in his wallet later,” she told a reporter. “He will find it lighter than usual.”

She and her friend had been waiting for an hour before the store opened.

Crowds of other bargainhunters laid siege to other big stores, including Lewis’s and Arnott Simpsons in Argyle Street, and Muirhead’s in Sauchiehall Street. All were said to be exceptionally busy.

Ten years later, it was the same story.

At Arnott’s, more than a thousand people queued for the doors to open at 9am on Boxing

Day. A young engaged couple from the east end of the city had been camping on the store’s doorstep since 6am the previous day, intent on buying a washingmachine and three-piece suite at knockdown prices: the machine was reduced from £139 to £39, and the suite from £289 to £45.

Behind them in the queue was a 14-year-old boy from Cranhill, who arrived at 10am in order to buy a sewing-machine for his mum. Arnott’s staff gave the trio free coffee before the store opened.

Arnott’s general manager, John Dickinson, said: “I think we are going to have a cracker of a day.”

Boxing Day, or winter, sales, traditionally generate considerable excitement amongst shoppers with a keen eye for a bargain, though they arguably leave everyone else – that is, people who have had quite their fill of shopping by Christmas Eve, thank you – decidedly cold.

And sometimes, as seen here, in December 1992, there are those who take advantage of the occasion to proclaim serious messages of their own.