A shopping trip today in the rain, to buy clothes and a new pair of shoes amongst other things.
We were amazed at the midweek bustle in Basingstoke's mall. All the shops we visited were crowded, and even finding an empty slot in the car park was a not-entirely-trivial task.
While Toys R Us was not crowded, the couple doing early Christmas shopping ahead of us spent almost £200 on a succession of big boxes covered with excitingly militaristic imagery.
Perhaps this is the last gasp of the consumer boom before everyone dives into a hole in January, to spend the next twelve months paying off their credit card bills.
So much for maintaining the level of demand in the economy.
