Just seventy more panic buying days before Christmas folks!
Exciting eh?
Let’s peel back a door on the advent calendar and see what’s in store for us.
Oh it’s a child with an empty box. And he’s crying.
Yep, it seems like only yesterday all the grownups were getting in a flap about the lack of petrol.
Now it’s toy shortages that are going to have us running around like headless turkeys between now and December 24.
This week’s dire warnings come from the boss of one of the UK’s largest independent toy retailers.
Toytown managing director Alan Simpson says delays in shipping stock from China and the shortage of HGV drivers in the UK is creating yet another of those sodding perfect storms.
We’re likely to be several hundred shipping containers short of what we need to keep shelves stocked in December, he reckons.
And by then all the good stuff will be gone.
“If you see it buy it,” he told Good Morning Scotland.
“Because you will be disappointed otherwise.”
Sunak: Ministers doing all we can to fix supplies for shops
We'll speak to Alan Simpson @TOYTOWN_UK#bbcgms 0750https://t.co/mcrkYvUSNG— Gary Robertson (@BBCGaryR) October 14, 2021
Well that’s nice isn’t it?
Tell me when we’re supposed to fit in complaining about the commercialisation of Halloween – neeps! guising! – if we’re all running around acting out Squid Game over the last Polly Pocket Rainbow Funland Theme Park?
Grab it while you can, but it’ll cost you
A pal I meet out dog walking works for one of the big supermarkets.
They’re putting their Christmas stock out now, he says. And they’re charging through the roof for it.
Aldi are selling 1,500 turkeys a day. Marks and Spencer say sales of frozen festive food are up by 500%.
The Daily Mail is advising its readers on ‘The foods you can freeze NOW to get ready for Christmas’.
Amazon is at it too.
An internal document seen by The Independent has revealed the online giant will push customers to shop in November, instead of the usual peak in mid-December, to avoid any disappointment.
“It’s hard to overestimate the level of supply disruption we’re facing, even with our resources,” a source said.
“It’s going to be a long, painful road to a new normal.”
Wake me up in January please.
Simple memories of Christmas past
It’s a long way from last winter.
Remember? When we were cancelling Christmas due to Covid rather than empty shelves.
I remember people speculating that we’d maybe all rediscover the simple pleasures of Yuletides of yore.
No splashing out on huge family gatherings with all the trimmings.
No squeezing ourselves into new sparkly frocks for the office do.
Freed from the treadmill of conspicuous spending we’d realise what really matters is not the latest must-have gadget, but the people we were missing.
Maybe that’s what the retailers are really worried about.
Harry Potter wands double in price as shortages cast black spell over Christmas https://t.co/8LvckB5qBH
— The Mirror (@DailyMirror) October 15, 2021
As we saw with petrol last month and loo roll last spring, there’s nothing like a warning about panic buying to get the panic buyers out in force.
Keep calm and ca’ canny this Christmas
Now I’m not one of those people who likes to bang on about how life was better when all we got was an apple and an orange and a shiny half crown at the bottom of our stockings.
I’ve overspent plenty at Christmas in the past.
And I know my parents knocked their pans in to earn the cash to put the presents under our Christmas tree.
And I’m grateful.
But honestly, they’re not the things I remember.
I do remember the year my cat chomped through the tin foil as the turkey was resting on the freezer. Mum turned it upside down to carve it and said it was a thing. She’d seen it on Delia.
I remember the year my dad broke his ankle rushing to get the cattle fed on Christmas Eve and didn’t let on until Boxing Day that he was in quite a lot of pain actually because he didn’t want to spoil everyone’s fun.
Covid kept us apart last year. But my mum still cooked Christmas dinner and he spent December 24 driving Tupperware boxes around Perthshire so her bairns, now aged coughty-four and coughty-two, wouldn’t go hungry.
They’re the reasons I hope we’ll get to be round the same table again this year.
And that’s honestly all I want for Christmas.
Who’ll pay for panic buying?
And that’s easy for me to say.
I don’t have to contend with demanding toddlers soaking up the adverts on the telly and doing whatever the 2021 equivalent of circling things in the Marshall Ward catalogue is.
It’s human nature to want to spoil the people we love and shower them with things that prove it.
God knows we all deserve a good time after the last year and a half.
But there’ll be folk heading out to the shops this weekend so they can stock up while they can, before all the best stuff is gone.
Maybe they’ll be sticking it on the credit card and never mind if there’s job insecurity, inflation or any number of uncertainties looming over their horizon in 2022.
I hope they get what they want. I hope it’s worth all the panic. But somehow I doubt it.