CANON BALLS

"That’ll be 279 pounds," says the sales assistant.

"You mean 259 pounds right?"

"No that’s 279 pounds."

I check the price tag, and repeat - with renewed confidence:

"No, you mean 259 pounds - look."

"No, that’s the price with the discount."

"Exactly. The discount. The 20 pound discount that is the reason I’m here today buying this camera from you."

"But Currys don’t actually give the discount, Canon do. You’ll have to go online to get it."

I pause for a moment to consider the implications of what I'm hearing. Not that Currys and Canon are actually plural entities. I know that not to be the case. No - that I've been deceiving myself into thinking that the price tag is telling me what the camera costs. When actually it's telling me what it will have cost at some point in the future after something else has happened. This is a price tag with its very own tense.

PRIMARY 1 NAILS IT

Here it comes.  I brace myself as the conductor-cum-child-herder raises her hands to call the primary choir to order.  It’s time to unleash the cutest thing anybody has seen - at least since last year’s carol concert.  It’s time to forget the stress and endless 'to do' lists that mark the irrevocable descent into Christmas.  Forget for a moment the on-going pressure of locating, securing, hiding, wrapping, hiding again and covertly depositing the small mountain of gifts gradually converging on the house from all four corners of the globe. The audience holds its collective breath in a state of anticipatory rapture.  This is it, the pay off.