London Diary

Boxing Day Blitz

The advent of Christmas entails the pressure of buying well thought of appropriate gifts for friends and family, which makes shopping a nightmare, elbowing your way through in overcrowded stores. But that doesn't get over with Christmas — what awaits is the Boxing Day sales. Despite a lazy Christmas, hundreds and thousands queue overnight to hit the stores.

This year early-bird shoppers queued from as early as 2 am, despite the cold and the rain, and violent bargain hunters brought chaos to the £3billion Boxing Day blitz as cut-price shoppers fought for the best of the day's reductions. The sight in front of stores like Selfridges, Harrods and Next and all others were worth watching. An estimated 30 million gave up their lazy weekend to grab a bargain. There was havoc with violent in-store clashes throughout the country.

The mayhem was unbelievable, with less aggressive shoppers being floored and people diving under metal shutters when the shops opened first thing before pushing those around them as they battled for prime bargains.

An IMRG research estimated that people fork out around £150 each on reduced cost goods, making the total national spend around £344million-an-hour, £5.75m-a-minute or £96,000-a-second over nine hours of trading. The previous record was December 27 last year at £342m-an-hour. 

Stores like Next and Marks & Spencer had discounts of up to 50 per cent on sale items. Having struggled to compete with online outlets in the run-up to Christmas stores did their best with discounts.

About 400,000 shoppers went to shopping centres like Westfield, 130000 to Lakeside centre in Essex. This is just to get an idea of the scale of it all. Hence, not surprising at all that within minutes each stores' pristine displays were torn apart by savage bargain hunters.

Experts claimed that foreign shoppers were behind the bulk of the big sales at London's priciest stores. Wealthy visitors from China and the Middle East are said to have a penchant for luxury goods like jewellery, watches and designer handbags — and spend on average four or five times the amount of their British counterpart. As the doors opened at Selfridges on Oxford Street, the overwhelming majority of shoppers that dashed for discounted Mulberry handbags or designer jackets were Chinese. Fifty percent of West End's Boxing Day shoppers were tourists.

And this year the advantage for shoppers was that Boxing Day was Saturday which for most was an extended Christmas break with the extra bank holiday Monday.

As they say, on Christmas you thank the Lord for everything you have and almost 24 hours later you rush to grab some more!

Give champagne its fizz!

This is the winding down time of year in the company of great food, champagne and wine and a lot of family time. And of course shopping. With the advent of January come all diet advices and the very popular Dry January, which has become a trend in Blighty.

But let's not ponder too much about the repercussions of over indulgence and start the day with a champagne breakfast. After all this is the season for cork popping fizz. But mind you, don't be lazy about overlooking the right glass for the right drink. If you want the champagne to retain its true flavour, stick to the flute.

Scientists at the University of Reims, in the heart of the French Champagne region, have made it clear that the wider coupe wine glasses limit the flavour while the flute is the best glass to enhance the flavour of champagne, which, by the way I feel is a highly overrated drink.

The logic behind it is that as bubbles rise and burst from the liquid, they release tiny droplets that produce the aroma and flavour. So in a flute, the bubbles mix together more, thereby creating a stronger flavour as compared to a wider coupe glass. To add to it, glasses with dimples etched into the bottom improves the effervescence when drinking champagne. And shaking champagne bottles before popping the cork reduces the risk of explosions! Here's to a glass of bubbly!

Happy New Year!

Now that 2016 has been ushered in, many will be making New Year resolutions which, more often than not, fizzle out sooner than expected. But this year New Year's eve celebrations was in the shadow of fear with alerts being issued of a terror attack in London and other European capitals. A 'friendly' intelligence service had warned of such an attack. Russia had already warned its people to stay home on New Year eve as the 'safest' way of seeing in the New Year.

It's highly unlikely that Londoners give into fear though. And decision-makers decided not to postpone the annual firework display by the Thames which sends a message that the terrorists are 'winning'. Security was instead been beefed up around the river Thames, for people to witness the sky light up at midnight. And this time the event was a ticketed one, and over 100,000 people forked out £10 pounds each for the spectacular show.

Others, in any case have News Year's Eve house parties which are becoming more popular and trendy because of the rip-off prices at clubs and hotels. Even among the 18-24 year olds, only 30% plan to go out.

A New Year's Eve dinner at The Savoy Hotel in London, including a gourmet five-course set menu, costs £350 per person. Britons celebrating New Year's Eve out generally spend an estimated £2.6billion — nearly £360million more than on a regular Friday or Saturday evening out. No wonder many chose to stay in and instead splash on new outfits and food and drink with friends to usher in 2016.

Wish everyone a happy 2016!