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Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Those bright red banners, the neatly printed letters... If you aren’t lured in by a colossal sign reading ‘SALE’, then nothing else will. Picture this, you pop out for some milk, when you see Topshop out of the corner of your eye; the sale has started. Somehow, you feel your feet carrying you away from Tesco... and towards Topshop. It’s like you’re possessed, you can’t help yourself. “One little look, that’s all”, you keep telling yourself, but secretly you know there will be something that you can’t resist snapping up. You get more and more excited, your slow amble turning into a fast paced gallop, making you look utterly ridiculous, but you don’t care. All you care about is getting to the shop before anyone else... and then you reach the entrance.

The world seems to stand still for a moment. You can almost hear the sound of angels’ song nearby. You dive towards the nearest sale section and start fiercely leafing through the clothes, but it’s somehow different. That fluffy jumper that you gazed upon longingly, day after day, but vowed to wait to get it until sales? Gone. The leather jacket, which everyone seemed to own, but the shop never had your size? Gone. By then, you’re becoming slightly more desperate. All you can come across are the lowest of the low, the bottom of the food chain, the old tattered garments. Suddenly it hits you.

Sales are like flip flops. You splash out on designer flip flops, knowing that they will be a staple in your summer wardrobe, and you’d wear them every day (Gok said they were, it must be true), but then when summer comes, they aren’t the same dream that they seemed to be back in dismal January. The sale assistant’s persuasion seems like a load of rubbish now; they hurt your feet, the sequins have all fallen off, and the white leather they once were are now a colour of a grey cloud of regret, and ‘if-only’.

I may not write on behalf of the whole of our nation, but for me, sales just don’t tick the boxes. Whenever I do go to the sales, I often end up at square one, buying things that weren’t even on sale in the first place. I have learnt my lesson, next year, I shan’t bother with the sales; I refuse to waste my money on impulse buys I could probably get for a quarter of the price at good ole Primark. No, I have developed a clever and complex plan, only for the most experienced of bargain hunters to truly understand. Pay the price-tags when they come, and spend all your money whilst that trusty fluffy jumper is still in stock, it won’t wait forever.