I think I’ll be giving Black Friday a miss

If not, did you find yourself, in the early hours of the morning, leaving a high street store with a deep fat frier or a coffee machine you didn’t really want.

I certainly didn’t do either and hope that you didn’t feel the need to take part in the latest wave of Americanisation to sweep across the country.

We appeared to be quite fortunate in this part of East Lancashire that “Black Friday” didn’t spark too many fisticuffs in the shopping aisles.

But the same couldn’t be said of other parts of the country where the police had to be called in before “Black Friday” altercations turned into full-scale riots.

I listened to a lot of radio conversations seven days ago about “Black Friday” and all that it means to people.

I fully understand that in America it is a long-standing ritual based on the fact that the previous day is Thanksgiving and no one opens their shop doors.

To counter-balance that, and to mark the fact that the last Friday in November is the last time that many people will get paid before Christmas, “Black Friday” has seen massive discounts and “flash sales” for many years.

I first encountered the concept on a couple of on-line retailers who brought us their own versions of the sale shopping phenomenon a decade or so ago. That has now spread to most major on-line retailers.

But do the high street stores really need to join in?

The cynic in me believes that most of those who earn their daily bread my selling us ours will follow any trend that will help fill their tills.

The other cynic in me also believes that there were a number of them who looked like they were offering huge discounts when, in fact, they appeared to be doing little other than shifting unsellable stock manufactured by unheard of brands.

And the researcher in me also found that many of the deals advertised were not that good and that better prices could be found with reputable on-line companies. “Black Friday” – no thank-you!