up the pole
Here's a question for you - how many times a day on your way through the grim, grey commute do you say No to, or otherwise refuse to acknowledge the existence of, someone in a fluorescent parka shoving something free you don't want in your face ?
This happened to me four times this morning. Today is not officially Blue Monday (the most depressing Monday of the year) but judging by the number of freebie-distributors, someone must have thought we needed cheering up. The orange-clad guys shoving out leaflets about the Puma Ocean Racing Challenge evidently thought so. But did they really think the best way to do it was to offer us the chance to dress up in silly orange uniforms and
There was a brief period last October when I started saying yes to the guy with City A.M. on the grounds that things were falling apart so fast, and the news was so exclusively finance-based, that his paper became for a time essential reading. I think I shocked him this morning by not only saying yes to his paper (when everybody else was whizzing past grim-faced) but also taking his picture.
This whole giving-you-things-you-don't-want scenario is symptomatic of the way the nation seems to be behaving of late. In all the womens' shops now, the discounts have reached the point where the floors are awash with clothing that people have simply dragged off the rails, decided against, and dropped, apparently not worth the shop staff's time to pick it up and offer it for sale at an even lower price. What really will be next ? People being dragged into shops and plied with five pound notes ? The truth is, I am no more likely to buy something hideous when it's offered to me for twenty pounds than I was when I saw it offered at forty pounds, and when it gets down to ten pounds, everyone is apparently agreeing with me that it's actually worthless and confirming that I was right not to buy it in the first place. I also hear that banks will soon be charging negative interest on savings accounts. Now, where can I find a heavily discounted mattress to stuff my cash into ?
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