Black Friday defied cost of living crisis

Sir, – I just can’t get my head around this cost of living crisis always in the news, with tearful folk having to choose between eating and heating, tin after tin, packet after packet disappearing from foodbank shelves quicker than a hungry labrador devours its dinner, single mums giving their story. Are there no father, mother, plus children (nuclear) families around any more or is it because they don’t have so many sorry tales to tell?

Now we come to Black Friday, the yearly shopping bonanza when bargains float before customers’ eyes like confetti at a summer wedding.

With folk having to regard every penny as a prisoner, industry analysts predicted the day would be

a damp squib. Not a bit of it. You cannot imprison the British shopper if they smell a bargain, like the lady who had been on the go from the time last night’s revellers were staggering home to join a queue of similarly excited bargain hunters desiring to purchase that “must have” item, for her a designer bag.

Throughout the day stores were busy as were hospitality venues, a feelgood atmosphere was in the air, spirits boosted by the World Cup with England, after disposing of the might of Iran, no more than six games from glory according to those wise old players who get paid for talking a load of poppycock to old folk like me who have heard the same predictions in every World Cup since that great day in the 1960s that I “sadly” missed

because I was working.

So the experts predicting doom were found wide of the mark, footfall in stores increased, and the money men who look at what we spend on various cards said spending was strong, so healthy in fact that some Black Friday records in transactions per second were broken. There’s no doubt many are struggling financially but to suggest the entire population is on its knees is fantasy. Crisis for some, inconvenience for many. Bring on the bargains.

Ivan W. Reid, Kirkburn, Laurencekirk.