h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

On Friday I spent nammettime avoiding the shops and looking around the gallery again, on the grounds that I suspected that the city centre would be crowded with people out Black Friday shopping. The gallery offered a calm and sane refuge from the city's crowds.

Sadly I'd forgotten about it being Black Friday and had arranged to meet a friend for a catch-up after work, as we always meet this time of year for a drink and chat in the Christmas sheds. We met and walked into town in the direction of the sheds, but the city was just far too crowded to even contemplate sitting down and drinking a stein or two, so we ended up heading to a quieter part of town.

Curiously when we were in the pedestrianised city centre we couldn't walk more than a few yards without people coming up to us with carrier bags asking if we wanted to buy 'perfume', holding out -wrapped boxes of labelled containers purporting to be perfume. This got quite annoying in a short space of time as we had at least four people aggressively ask us who didn't really seem to want to take 'no' for an answer. This was while we were walking outside shop Superdrug which had a huge label on the window, 'SALE! 60% off perfume!' Presumably people were buying the stuff from dodgy-looking fellers with carrier bags, but I dread to think who.

<BB<

Glad you managed to have a good Friday outing, but that is scary about the people with carrier bags...

"Presumably people were buying the stuff from dodgy-looking fellers with carrier bags, but I dread to think who."

Yes indeed...

"The gallery offered a calm and sane refuge from the city's crowds"