Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Save us from these American exports.

I was just starting to slightly get over the whole idea of Christmas – reasoning to myself in soothing tones that really, it’s not that bad, is it?

So long as you avoid all shops and town centres between the first mince pie sighting in late August and Christmas Eve at 5pm, it’s really not too awful during that tiny shopping gap between close of business on the 24th and the shops reopening again at the crack of dawn on the 26th.