Boxing Day - when retail teams have to punch above their weight, and when bargain-seeking shoppers with nothing better to do also have to punch buttons. Photo / Paul Taylor
Boxing Day - when retail teams have to punch above their weight, and when bargain-seeking shoppers with nothing better to do also have to punch buttons. Photo / Paul Taylor
Oh how very proud and humbled fine chaps like Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali would be today.
For it is (wait for it and only begin hissing after I deliver it if you wouldn't mind) Boxing Day.
The day where retail teams have to punch above their weight, as wellas punch the appropriate digits on the cash registers (if indeed there are still such things today) and when bargain-seeking shoppers with nothing better to do also have to punch buttons.
Christmas has come and gone for another year, and today is a day for thought, and remembrance, and relaxation…and all the usual palaver.
And to wonder where you left the car.
"Today is a day for thought, and remembrance, and relaxation...and all the usual palaver.
And to wonder where you left the car."
So anyway, it is the day when giant retail chains stare into the new calendar days of 2021 (or whatever it is next year for my memory started going ape in 1977) and wonder "what can we sell now"?
Boxing Day sales is their final hurrah, for about a week before they start unlocking "New Year specials".
Then of course they will begin "commerce planning" for the sale of Easter eggs and hot cross buns…which will duly arrive around mid-February.
My humble advice to the commercially inebriated boardroom crews is don't panic, for it will soon be Christmas again.
Which I daresay is the thought in the minds of many shoppers today who are filling the boots of their cars with bargain "stuff" for some annual occasion in 364 days' time.
Very practical, many may suggest.
I couldn't be bothered, I would counter.
Yes, it is Boxing Day, but due to things like deadlines, and partial loss of memory due to hosting some hasty refreshments, I sit here on the eve of Christmas and tap these button things (not eftpos I can assure you) to create this hopefully relevant spiel.
Our Christmas Day plan is to assemble at the abode of one of the kids because after about a thousand years of hosting happy riots and food fights at our digs the time has come for someone else to bear the burden of cleaning the place up…for the chirpy grandkids are superbly adept at creating flotsam and jetsam.
Always a colourful time (especially when clearing the landscape of shredded wrapping paper) and I can assure you, I will do my bit and leave as much trash as I can behind.
That's when I usually break wind to make the grandkids laugh and all is forgotten, but not forgiven.
For they will likely be savouring the chocolate dessert at the time.
I have one bright memory of a Christmas long passed.
Our lad, now a dad himself, was delighted to unwrap a parcel to discover a shiny box with a clear plastic window upon it, to give the recipients a glimpse of the treasure within.
Yep, he saw the mechanical thing inside and gleefully took it out…then went back to the empty box.
He was captivated by it and put his hand inside it and tapped upon the plastic window with his other little hand.
And he piled other stuff into it and could see it all through its "window".
The truck and trailer thing, or whatever it was, was parked up nearby.
His attention was on the box.
Go figure.
We should have gone to the shop and said "keep the toy…can we just have the empty box?"
Would have saved about $19.99 and that would have sorted the turkey and puddings.
So on this day, this Boxing Day, the lad may be a little cool with me if I stage what is festering in my head at this time.
For I will give him an empty box.
It is now Boxing Day, and that is quite fitting for if I carry out this plan the thing will likely still be wrapped around my head.
Ahh but the kids would have laughed, and that's the main thing.
Take care one and all and I'll see you in the New Year…if I manage to get the box off my head.
