I'm not too sure about the sales. Have we not been through enough already? Is there anything out there that we haven't thrown to the ground, trussed and shrouded in wrapping paper? It seems that Irish retailers are not too sure about the sales either, writes Ann Marie Hourihane
I'm sorry, but signs proudly declaring "Up To 30% Off Selected Items" do not constitute a sale. It's got to be a minimum of 50 per cent before the true consumer's heart skips a beat.
You would have thought that, at this point, the very concept of the sales would have withered away, or have been quietly culled, like our constitutional claim to the North.
After all, we don't have summers any more, so there is no need to clear the shop floor to make room for sleeveless dresses and pastel tops.
No wonder there are always big reductions on swimwear. We live most of the year in a permanent April, and still the retailers persist with this quaint idea of seasons.
And then there was the arrival on these shores of the British high street. The TK Maxx stores are allegedly one long sale, with all the advantages and disadvantages thereof. But even leaving TK Maxx out of it, there doesn't seem much point in fighting another human being for a pair of 400 thread cotton sheets which are reduced in the sales, when Marks & Spencer are doing them all year round for the same price. (I'm not entirely clear what 400 thread cotton sheets are, but I really plan to learn. Please don't write in.)
Of course you could be a sales expert, quietly reading this with your vacuum flask clutched in your fist, having spent the night in a sleeping bag outside your targeted store. You could be the type of person who buys their presents for next Christmas at the sales, which makes you fascinating. If this is the case you don't really need to read any further. The Sudoku is further on.
On the other hand, you may be reading this as you pant in some subterranean coffee bar, over-heated and wondering what has gone wrong with your life when you can't even succeed in wresting a pair of Wolford tights from the mob.
In which case this column is for you. There seems to be a sort of theory about the place that there is a rational way in which approach the sales - "cashmere is always an investment" - which is like trying to get strategic about an orgy.
Let's not bother with that nonsense. The sales are a bunfight, but there's no point in getting superior about them. All those refuseniks who say "I can't stand the sales" are like all those people who say "I only listen to Radio Four". Too good to be wholesome.
The fact of the matter is that the sales will be on for the entire month of January and we'll all stumble into them sooner or later. Unless you are a married man whose wife takes him by the hand at this time of year to buy a suit, in which case you won't be stumbling and you don't know how lucky you are.
For the rest of us the sales are a very public, communal experience - and a tad too communal for some.
Our local sales expert was full of good advice. Such as "Recce in advance" (bit late for that now). "Avoid the 70 per cent rail,
it's all unwearable", and "buy the most boring thing in the shop. These are called basics." My own advice is simple: saucepans.
The best dressed woman I know buys everything at the sales but in 20 years of acquaintance she has not divulged where or when she goes. Our local sales expert says go either really early - yes, that is today - or really late, because they're shipping the stuff in for weeks (from where?)
The best dressed woman is really, really skinny and that has to help. In fact any divergence from the norm is helpful during the sales. The shoe departments are full of people with size 39 feet, and we're turning bitter whilst all the very tall girls and the very small girls run away with the fantastic shoes, like children in a fairytale.
The sales are strewn with regret. You could be sorry about your miserably average measurements, which leave you beside the bin of scarves. Or you could be sorry that you succeeded in nabbing that fringed cocktail dress that you could not possibly wear to the pub.
Or you could be mourning the fact that you hesitated over that same fringed cocktail dress, which could really have changed your life, and saw it carried off to some distant suburb by a woman who looked most unpleasant.
And then there's furniture, which is a nightmare. And electronic goods, which are getting cheaper all the time anyway, and are so very much cheaper in other countries that it is a miracle that we buy them here at all. Remember, a saucepan means never having to say you're sorry.