The winter scavenging virus strikes again

If Christmas is about anything at all these days, it's about families spending time together. Which may explain why, at the very first opportunity yesterday, tens of thousands fled their homes and returned to the streets for the start of the New Year sales.

Some day people will get tired of shopping, but there's no sign of this happening just yet. Only two days after the condition seemed to have been brought under control, a renewed outbreak of the winter scavenging virus stretched many Dublin shops to their limit, and left assistants struggling to cope.

Such were the numbers infected - women seem to be particularly vulnerable - that some stores had to introduce visitor restrictions. At Next in Henry Street, where the sale began at a mind-boggling 5 a.m., shoppers had to queue to get in throughout the day, before taking their chances among the jam-packed aisles.

What sort of people shopped for clothes at 5 a.m. on December 27th, The Irish Times asked a harassed store worker, who was wearing a red sash to distinguish herself from those requiring treatment. "Crazy people," she suggested, echoing a thought that had already occurred to The Irish Times.

More than ever yesterday, the women's footwear department in Brown Thomas was not a place for the faint-hearted male, with experienced female shoe shoppers picking through the bargains in a friendly but intense atmosphere, like a group of lionesses sharing an antelope. Typical of the value on offer was a pair of Dolce and Gabbana three-quarter length "cow-print, pony-skin" (or possibly the other way around) boots at half price: €512. With such giveaways, it was no surprise that the store was crowded, and there wasn't room to swing Winona Ryder's shopping bag in the aisles.

The shop would not discuss financial figures, except to say that sales were showing "double-digit growth" on last year. This was a term echoed by Clery's, where a spokeswoman also declined to talk numbers, other than to estimate that 20,000 people would pass through the doors during the day. But even in the absence of figures, there was evidence that shoppers were giving a double-digit response to predictions of economic doom.

In the calmer atmosphere of Louis Copeland's on Capel Street, the master tailor offered a more cautious assessment, however. Louis is the man to go to if you want the economy's inside leg measurement, and he suggested that while business was good, there were "more credit cards and less cash" in evidence this year.

Nevertheless, Henry Street was almost wall-to-wall sales yesterday, when even the truncated spire on O'Connell Street (60 per cent off until January 6th) seemed to have caught the bug. Arnotts and Roches Stores remained closed but these too are expected to succumb to the epidemic when their sales begin this morning.