One assumes that customers weren’t asked to rate staff members’ knowledge of possessive apostrophes…! And I’m sure I can’t be the only one who thinks those teddy bears look slightly threatening!

M&S appear to have gone all-out with their Christmas decorations this year… After all, nothing says “Christmas” like a squirrel wearing a crown.

Glitzen is a 40ft tall reindeer. As tall as a house, she’s the tallest reindeer sculpture in the world. This is the third year she’s featured among the Metrocentre’s Christmas decorations, and this year, she has two children with her.

The scale of the sculpture is certainly arresting – far more so, actually, in person than in photographs. The frame is made of over 2km of aluminium, and the sculpture is decorated with over 10,000 fairy lights. I’ve no stats on the new baby ones, but you’ll notice from the picture that each is more than a storey tall.

It’s just slightly depressing to be seeing them in October!

I don’t know what it was about this scene, but it felt oddly atmospheric: a closed down shop with the lights shining through the gauze of the rolled-down shutter, with (I assume) the remaining stock gathered at the back and the occasional staff member busying about.

I don’t know what the shop used to be, or why it has closed down, or why there are still people and things in it despite it looking like it’s been shut for a while… but it is a little bit of a sad sight. Perhaps a little depressing for a Friday night?!

You’d think they’d proofread for excessive, commas!

This is the label from Wendy’s new jeans. If I bought clothes that had been extensively destroyed before I bought them, I’d be looking for a refund. Apparently, though, it makes these particular jeans more desirable!

I know I forgot to post a picture yesterday – it’s the Sunday curse striking again. I’ll post an extra photo to make up the numbers either later today or tomorrow.

I tweeted about discovering Costa’s strawberry lemonade a few weeks ago, but it probably bears repeating… When I worked in Calgary (and when I holidayed in Toronto) I really enjoyed Second Cup’s strawberry lemonade, and was quite disappointed to find that no coffee shops sold it in the UK on my return. But five years on, Costa has started selling it, and whilst it isn’t quite as lemony as Second Cup’s, it is pretty good!

This is a bit of the pretty escalators in Newcastle’s Monument Mall, whose workings are shown as a result of tge sides of them being glass. I guess these escalators are not long for this world as the mall is being in-filled to provide a series of bigger restaurant and shopping units accessed from the street. It seems a shame, because they’re certainly attractive and unusual!

It’s Christmas! Or, at least, John Lewis’s window leads one to believe that it is. It’s only 29th September, for goodness sake!

I know moaning about Christmas getting earlier every year is a little tedious, but really… a Christmas window in a major department store in September?!

This is the first pop-up Calendar Club that I’ve seen this year – and it seems a depressing reminder that Christmas is coming!

Calendar Club has grown at a remarkable pace since the first 12 stores opened in 1998. It now opens over 300 temporary stores every Christmas, and sells over 4 million calendars from a selection of over 3,000 varieties. These days, it even publishes its own calendars under the Other House label.

One of the most remarkable parts of their business model is their store turnaround time: they aim to open within 24hrs of taking a store’s lease. Minimal turn-around times maximise the company’s profit, but also give it a great reputation with retail landlords who typically want to minimise the number of closed units in their malls… which, in turn, gives the company a stronger negotiating position year-on-year, reducing rents and further maximising profits.