Well, following on from Black Friday, here’s a lovely cop-out of a blog post. We are heading towards the close of Cyber Monday, another retail marketing term that seems to be passing me by, but has caused a whole load of media excitement and spending frenzies.

“Cyber Monday” has no ambiguous or remotely interesting origin. It’s simply a marketing invention, and is a relatively young term, still being under ten. Unlike Black Friday, Cyber Monday encourages us to spend our hard-earned from the comfort of our homes, rather than going out and trampling fellow shoppers underfoot.

I realised how insane and insidious the whole naming shopping days has become when a friend said to me, “Sorry, I can’t come on the girls’ night out as it’s Crazy Tuesday”. Naturally in the current climate I genuinely assumed that Crazy Tuesday was a thing. A thing involving Christmas and spending, probably. Of course, it’s not a thing at all; she’s just having a really busy day.

Tomorrow I gather it will actually be Giving Tuesday (yes, really), which is meant to kick-start the generous spirit of Christmas by encouraging charitable donations. Having kicked our neighbours out of the way to grab the last cut-price HDTV, we shall now in a moment of guilty clarity donate said TV to our local homeless shelter. Or not.

I’m just looking forward to Back-to-Normal Wednesday.