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Saturday 5 December 2015

Cue Jumper



This is in danger of becoming like an Advent calendar of rants – a Rantvent calendar, if you will.
This morning I visited the champions of profit-deception, Tesco, at their marvellous Driffield store.
Firstly I was accosted by schoolchildren who wanted to know if I was interested in donating to the local foodbank “at this difficult time” (hard to believe a child would even say that, so I’ll assume they had been conditioned into it using Clockwork Orange-style aversion therapy). I’d love to, but “this difficult time” isn’t easy for any of us, so I did my best I-can’t-her-you face and side-stepped them. And I thought chugging was illegal anyway?
The store staff were all wearing Christmas jumpers in an attempt to get people in the mood. None of them looked like they’d been coerced into it, so it’s safe to assume that they were all on drugs. The company had probably doled out the drugs and threatened to sack staff if they didn’t appear Christmassy enough.
If that wasn’t suitably annoying, they were pumping out Christmas music through the shop at a high enough volume to make my brain rattle. It was good to hear that despite the rugby legend’s recent passing, they still honour Jonah Lomu by playing Stop the Cavalry though.
It was great that several thousand other people chose the same time as me to visit Tesco, dangerously low on supplies of over-priced stollen and premium-strength lager. And I really appreciated having to wait in a long queue at the self-serve checkout whilst listening to a shopper tell her friend: "I fucking love Christmas, me."
After skilfully avoiding the foodbank beggars once more, I escaped on to the street and thought I’d successfully got away from the faux-Christmas nonsense.
Not the case.
I rounded the corner on my way home and had to walk in the road to avoid the assembled lunatics who were listening to the Salvation Army band knocking out a few festive hymns.
When will this nightmare end?

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