SOME years ago, on Boxing Day morning, I emerged blinking like a mole from under the sagging streamers, puckering balloons and curling tinsel of home, to waddle to the shop, where fellow villagers, all glowing and newly-gloved, were gathered, still full of pudding, goodwill and mulled wine.

“And what did you get for Christmas?” they asked, as I approached, pale and drained.

“Gastroenteritis,” I replied and, as one, they stepped back to a safe distance, muttering limp words of sympathy.

But this Boxing Day found me, my wife and our 12-year-old son in the concrete and glass preview-of-Hell known to estate-agents, PRs, wide-eyed fantasists and others suffering from psychiatric derangements, as the town’s shopping centre

We joined the sales – that frenzy of swelling beer-bellies, unbridled greed, three-wheeled prams, sulks, dribbling babies, screeching mothers, gasping pensioners, bottom-fondling teenagers, bad breath, recycled sweat, jaded-burgers, nylon track-suits, hoodies and fanned gift tokens.

To prevent clashes of interest, we decided to go our separate ways and reconvene an hour later with our trophies. I followed a tall, lumbering chap in his mid-40s, who was heading for a discount store. His smile was slow and amiable and it shone in his brown eyes and spread wide on his heavy lips.

“Have you got jigsaws with nice pictures?” he asked the young assistant, explaining that it was for his mum, whom he was to see that night. “She likes jigsaws with 100 pieces,” he said. “I know that.”

There would have been things he didn’t know – those things we keep in books and computers. But he did know that his mum liked 100-piece jigsaw puzzles.

“No jigsaws left,” said the assistant, trying to cope with numerous customers in a seething mass of impatience. “They used to sell jigsaws in Woolies,” I said. “It’s just up the road.”

We passed the sign pointing to Santa’s Grotto, now shuttered with corrugated iron, but jack-the-lad on the corner was still demonstrating his birdsong whistles at £1 each, just in case you needed to woo a chaffinch. At Woolies, a man locked the door. “We’re closing now,” he said, “forever”.