TO the young couple in the Ford Ka some advice: get a protected no claims bonus then you too can do what I did in the Fort car park on Tuesday.

Yes, it was a lovely gesture and when you grow up, you will be able to laugh just like I did.

To the nice lady in Frasers: thanks for trying on the coat I carried for 90 minutes while my wife swithered. It does look great with denims and don't worry, she forgives you for being 6in taller, ever so slightly slimmer and blonde.

And if she doesn't, I do.

To all designer store shoppers: you are stark raving mad: untidy, rude, greedy. I hope you go into the red and stay there at least until my ankles, shins and elbows heal.

Next year wear something softer so I don't injure myself pushing you out of the way.

To the former midwives and consultants at Rutherglen Maternity, long-gone but not forgotten, my heartfelt gratitude for 20 years of freedom from post-Christmas sales.

The Boxing Day baby is now 5ft 10in, doing well at university and has lost all interest in birthday parties and bouncy castles well the kind I am prepared to pay for.

Having braved the sales and survived, let me tell you now, they are a con.

Take the set of pots I found in one store, a half-price bargain at £100; except I bought them 18 months ago for exactly the same great half-price deal with the same full price and paid, you've guessed, £100.

What about clothes at 70% off?

Read the small print and you will find they have been charged at so many stores at the higher price for so many days in the past six months.

And where is the store?

I once asked the question and got, what I believe is an honest reply: "Well, it is not so much a store as depot with a small retail outlet attached, about the size of an old-fashioned telephone box, in a long-lost Welsh valley guarded by dragons and spirits of Christmas shoppers: they wail a lot."

Not so much off the beaten track as waiting for it to built.

According to England's education department, sale shoppers do not get the best out the experience because they can't count.

My view is slightly different: in the eyes of the retailer they don't count.

Look at the panic buying in the run-up to Christmas - it didn't happen.

Shops were reporting a slump, even though they opened longer and later and started their sales earlier. A sure sign the ripped-off UK consumer has learned at last.

A few years ago I was horrified at shelling out on a very expensive leather jacket for my wife only to see it more than halved in price a few days later.

I did what any self-respecting consumer should: carefully rewrapped it, with the receipt, took it back, got a refund and bought it again at half price!

Christmas has never been the same since.