There is a garden centre (aha, gotcha! You didn’t see this one coming did you?) on the outskirts of Droitwich that tells everyone – via an enormous banner – that it is the Garden Centre of the Year 2008.
As voted for by the elderly residents of Droitwich, probably.
Anyway, this garden centre.
They’ve got their Christmas lights up.
Yeah, honest!
And…
They hav a 50x larger-than-life wickerwork reindeer standing just behind their boundary fence.
Hmm…
Let me just check the calendar a minute.
goes off to look for a calendar before remembering he could always use Groupwise
Yep, I was right.
It’s the twenty-melon-farming-fifth of chicken-sucking October.
Or in other words.
It isn’t even November yet.
The God of Mammon must be thrilled to bits to see the cash tills at the temple of Avarice ringing away to the cheesy background of The Pogues’ Fairty Tale of New York so early in the year.
I am going to hold a one-man protest at this blatant attempt to consumerise our lives to even further depths.
I am not going to patronise this garden centre with my hard-earned dosh.
Oh no.
Not one penny shall I spend there, in honour of their bad taste attempt to bring Christmas ever-forward in to the larger part of the year.
Here in the States, the only thing that prevents them from launching Christmas now is that you have to do the things in the correct order: first, Halloween. When Halloween is over, start with Thanksgiving, right away. And as soon as Thanksgiving’s turkeys are in the oven, start with Christmas, right now, paint everything in green and red and don’t let people forget it’s time for them to buy presents!
Garden Centre of Year… this was awarded by a trade association after inspection of 150 garden centres. Re Xmas , it’s a tricky one.. can’t please everybody all the time etc>