Lost in the Supermarket

I'm cool with Blue Monday and Orange Wednesday's, but when did Black Friday become a thing over here?  I don't think I'd ever heard of it till a few years ago and now the news has been filled with images of people from around the country fighting, shouting and making complete tits of themselves as they clamber over one another in an effort to get their sweaty mitts on that most coveted of all possessions: shiny stuff. I'm not saying that England is an especially classy place (despite the top hat and monacle stereotype, we were, at the end of the day, founded by a viking pimping out his daughter to a Welshman, not to mention all that barging into other countries and taking their stuff that we did) but I seem to remember that we at least attempted to put up a decorous front. It's a theory of mine that we're currently reliving the 1980's; The Tories are in power and telling everyone that the poor and unemployed are somehow the enemy within, a new fringe party is winning by elections and talking bollocks about forming the next government, the US is being challenged internationally by a rising Asian power, pop music is largely wank and, most distressingly, there appears to be a general consensus within the wider culture that greed and avaristic self interest are not only permissible, but somehow admirable.  Couple that with the peculiar shamelessness that seems to be the internet age's gift to the national psyche and you get scenes like on Friday, with red faced, sweaty men drop kicking little old ladies in order get their mitts on a plasma TV with 20% off (I may be exagerating a bit there, but - dammit - the point still stands),

It's even more depressing as, unlike the US, we don't even have the accompanying holiday that provides some justification for the ensuing orgy of consumerism. I've been lucky enough in the past to have been invited to spend Thanksgivings with Americans of the homesick expat variety and it's always struck me as a nice idea for a holiday. Granted there's not much niceness in how things really played out between natives Americans and white settlers (and apologies for being approximately the 9 billionth person to make that observation), but there's a lot to be said for a day when you get together with your friends and loved ones and acknowledge that given the endless suffering and bigotry that has comprised the human experience for most of history, we're lucky even - dare I say it - well jammy to have been in this part of the world and in this era. Plus you get to eat until you slip into a food coma, which I thoroughly approve of, even if my waistline does not.

So yeah, when I'm in charge - and God willing it shouldn't be long now - I would instate a British Thanksgiving because if the Canadians can do it, so can we. I would also exile all minor royals, ban incorrect use of the word 'literally', commission a third series of Spaced and move the capital somewhere a bit more central, like Barnsley. So follow me to a brighter tomorrow!

In the interim I've finished another page of Rag and Bone (below). Spread the word. The people must know.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton