Although it’s mid-January as I write this, I remember how different Boxing Days were.

This was THE day sales started; the day you started thinking about your summer holiday (preferably without Cliff Richard and his bus); the day you wondered what it might be like to have servants to give presents to.

These days sales are ever present. There are so many different excuses: Black Friday; Cyber Monday; Ruby Tuesday (when rings are cheap); Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (for people seeking Alan Sillitoe memorabilia) and Monday, Monday (for Mamas and Papas fans).

Boxing Day would be the day people would queue outside shops overnight and wondered why they never had the strength to carry to bargain three-piece suite back home.

The bumper issues of both the Radio Times and TV Times would carry page after page of potential holiday destinations. 

There would be snow on the ground as the entire family pored over the double issues knowing that mentally they were in the warmth of the Shanklin sun as they decided upon the family’s holiday destination before a marathon game of Newmarket began.

On Boxing Day 1967, my family decided to go to Majorca; seven months later I discovered the meaning of the word gastro-enteritis.

Looking back, I’d have preferred to have spent fourteen-days in the queue outside MFI.   Although, it would have taken me a fortnight to have erected a one-man tent and got the Primus stove going.

Bon voyage and don’t drink the water.