Shopping on the verge of a breakdown

It's a melancholy experience, Christmas shopping in the credit crunch. No bargain is quite bargainous enough to assuage the fear; no discount sufficiently steep that it could not be better still. Deep down most of us probably believe the old saw that you get what you pay for. If prices can be so abruptly reduced, perhaps it's not the case that you've got your sticky fingers on a purchasing opportunity you'd be a fool to let slip; maybe it's just evidence of how blatantly you were being ripped off before the markdown. And so the dopamine rush of being a good consumer has been replaced, in malls across the globe, by hesitation and a niggling sense of disappointment...

Or so I thought yesterday, after an hour or so trawling clothes shops to very little avail - if it's half-price, silk and dry-clean only, or creased, itchy, boob-crushing or camel's toe-inducing, I'd still rather not, thanks. But today the pair of shoes I'd had my beady eyes on for months turned up on a rack outside the store for £30 less than the original price, and I have to say I swooped on them as efficiently as a bird of prey alighting on its next snack, as if generations of evolution had fine-tuned my responses for no less a purpose. And felt mightily satisfied afterwards, if still just a teeny bit guilty...

Yesterday I tried half-heartedly to negotiate a discount, and failed dismally. The secret of successful haggling, I've been told, is to be prepared to walk away - which I did. But that means you can never allow yourself to really want the thing you're about to haggle for. The bargain itself, and not the object you're bargaining for, must become your aim.