Recession upside? The best after-Christmas sales ever

Yes, the economic news is grim. Both companies and personal savings collapsing at speed, more job loss headlines each day, a general feeling of angst across the Western world. But the strange fact about this recession so far is that if you remain employed, and you don’t have to worry about retirement any time soon, many people’s personal finances have actually improved in the past few months. The lowest interest rates in years and plummeting gas prices mean that some people are seeing several hundred pounds a month back on their personal bottom line.

And then there are the post-Christmas sales. I know that (a) I should be saving my money and (b) I really don’t need much. But when someone is dangling lovely clothing in front of you for massive markdowns and you are being told that you can help the American economy by buying … well, who could really say no?

Boxing Day (the 26th) found me at Chesterfield Mall at 8:30, where a hopeful Dillards employee was handing out black garbage bin bags at the entrance to facilitate the massive amounts he expected people to buy. Sadly for Dillards, it was neither as crowded as I’d expected, nor were the deals as good. My bin bag remained unopened. Macy’s was a different matter, with lots of 75% off signs and additional early morning specials. I walked out with a beautifully designed Evan Picone suit for less than it costs me to fill my car’s tank at home. Next off to Frontenac Plaza, St. Louis’ poshest mall, where some of Saks’ markdowns were so extreme you wondered if they were taking a loss. A Cole Haan handbag that retailed for more than $300 came home with me for $65. Selected high-end designers throughout the store were 75% off. Yes, I bought some of them, too. We then attempted West County mall, but by this point the whole city was up and shopping. After losing an hour looking for a parking space (40 minutes of it trapped in a gridlocked multi-story garage), we gave up, leaving me to imagine what glories might have tempted at Nordstrom.

This strategic retreat left some cash in my discretionary shopping budget for Round 2 at the Osage Beach Outlet Mall in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, where I was visiting Dad for the weekend. While he couldn’t share my shopping glee the way Mom did the day before, he was wonderfully helpful in carrying bags and had the patience of a saint hanging out on various chairs and benches while I indulged.

I am usually pretty ambivalent about outlet malls. Long experience has taught me that many brands manufacture a whole different, and cheaper, range of clothing for their “outlet” stores, and sometimes the so-called deals aren’t as good as in the department stores. You really need to know your base prices before you can evaluate whether or not you’re getting a deal. While Ralph Lauren and Liz Claiborne were a bust, the Jones New York store was beguiling, with a well-stocked rack of summer clearance stuff for foolish prices. Some people find fulfilment bagging game; No hunter could feel any more satisfied bringing down an elusive buck as I did when I snagged a pair of tailored Bermudas that retailed for $80 for $5.99.

And then came Coldwater Creek. This branch of one of my favourite shops is new since I last visited Osage Beach, and it is a true outlet. Everything I saw on the racks I’d seen in the main stores, and everything was well below the original price. Summer and autumn stuff was priced to clear; plenty of items were 85% or more under the original cost. I bought a pair of formal trousers I had seriously considered buying for full price at $95, and for which I already own the matching blouse, for $4.99. I was nearly delirious with happiness, only surpassed when I found a pair of espadrilles that matched the Jones Bermudas for $4.99. Similar deals abounded, in such profusion that I had to force myself to stop shopping after an hour. I might not have needed that bin bag at Dillards, but I could hardly lift the hefty bag of goodies I emerged with here. Dad had his work cut out for him to haul this largess back to the car.

At this point I officially called it quits and retired to a Mexican restaurant for restorative margaritas, content in the realisation that I’d done my bit to fight recession. God Bless America, and God Bless American Retail.

Finally in the Christmas spirit, thanks to a delay at snowy O'Hare

We all have Pavlovian reactions to certain things that bring out the Christmas in us. Many are shared across whole cultures ... like mince pies and crackers on one side of the Atlantic, cookie exchanges and madcap home decorations on the other. Others are unique to us, drawn from some repeated tradition of our own pasts.

For me, few things say Christmas quite like waiting for a delayed flight in a snowbound Chicago O'Hare airport. Or make me feel 19 years old again quite so well.

University was my first extended period of time away from home, of course. Thus Christmas break was my first real experience with homecomings. I can still remember the immense push towards final exams. The complete, satisfied exhaustion when they were over. (I'm still exhausted after the push to Christmas, of course, but without the satisfaction of an aced final and with the assurance that all the same stresses are waiting for me post-holiday.) I remember the way my mood would soar every minute as the bus carried me from Evanston to O'Hare. It was finally Christmas, and I had two or three weeks of complete R&R ahead. Then I'd get to the airport and, inevitably, there would be some sort of weather-related delay. So I'd settle in, chat with the unusually happy crowd of travelers, always dotted with some other Northwestern students showing signs of post-exam exhaustion, and wait for that St. Louis flight to go.

My family hasn't spent Christmas in St. Louis since my grandmother died in 1986, so that's a very limited memory. But it's as potent as any for me, and washed a flood of holiday cheer through my soul last Friday afternoon as I walked beneath the terminal's arches of holiday decorations and found my flight delayed by two hours. Same cheerful, gift laden crowds. Same civic Santa walking the terminal keeping people's spirits up. Same Northwestern students in transit, Freshmen made obvious by their proud displays of purple university sweatshirts. (My God, did I ever look that young and eager?) And one other Northwestern alumni, class of '86. The delay allowed me to catch a brief but joyous reunion with Craig Jackson, one of my oldest college friends, met over the area rugs in Montgomery Ward's the first day of new student week as we were decking out our dorm rooms. I hadn't seen him for nearly ten years, though we're in regular touch. The happy circumstance added to my holiday cheer. We both looked young and eager and had barely changed since the '80s. Of course.

This holiday spirit was much needed, as I can't remember a season where I've ever felt quite so little festivity. The gloom and doom of the economy set the tone, of course. Any holiday display felt like fiddling while Rome burned. People just weren't in the mood. London, usually an endless whirl of alcohol sodden holiday parties from late November through the last Thursday before Christmas, was spookily quiet. You could actually get a taxi, a table at a restaurant or a seat at a bar without much effort. Parties were almost non-existent. (I usually get invited to 15 or 20; this year there were three.) Christmas lunches dwindled. (You'll note a dearth of restaurant reviews this month.) Instead of merriment, most of us were sunk in high pressure, deeply distressing work activities related to cutting budgets and jobs. The best gift this year may be continued employment and the ability to pay your mortgage. And at least 40% of us, myself included, seem to be hacking away with coughs, cold and flu.

This year may mark the final death of the Christmas card. I couldn't find the time to send my own, and less than 10 dropped through my post. In a world where we are so constantly connected by email, texts and blogs, the old, chatty card with its annual update letter seems as redundant as an auto worker's job.

My travel schedule didn't help. Leaving London on the 18th, not returning until 15 January, what was the point of Christmas decorations? So my cottage, usually sporting better decorations that Santa's grotto at Harrod's, barely made it into the season. A few sprigs of evergreen, a few ornaments on the mantle, a reduced version of my illuminated Christmas village in the front window to make it look like I was at home. Bah, humbug.

And then to O'Hare. And all those cheery Americans letting the spirit of Christmas shine through, managing to wear their holiday cardigans and Santa hats in public with no trace of embarrassment. A nation of people who happily chat to strangers and tell you to have a nice day and mean it. I feel the gloom lifting. Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good respite from reality. Maybe if we all just believe, things will be better in January.

In hope of inspiration, we conjure the ghosts of Fleet Street past

If I were given just one crack at a time machine, I'd be ripped with indecision. Would I head for the Florence of Lorenzo di Medici and watch the birth of the Renaissance? Or would it be to the streets of Marcus Aurelius' Rome to experience that empire at its zenith? Or would my heart take me to Fleet Street in the early 18th century to witness the birth of modern journalism and the fellowship of literary and artistic giants?

Fleet Street has cast a steady spell over me since I was a high school student, first discovering Addison & Steele, Dr. Johnson, Boswell, the Kit Kat Club and all the other fascinating people that made Georgian London throb with literary excitement. Thereafter followed 200 years at the heart of the journalistic and literary trades. The ghosts of the world's finest writers, conversationalists and wits haunt this street. And, most specifically, its pubs. Which is perhaps why I've always preferred the options here, away from the legacy of banking and the braying market traders that occupy the watering holes closer to my own office.

So what better option for a Christmas gathering of PR hacks than Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, where we could drink in atmosphere, not spend too much and perhaps get inspired by the talents of the former patrons? Such were my thoughts as we raised our glasses under the penetrating eyes of Dr. Johnson's portrait.

The Cheese is probably the most famous of the many fine pubs along Fleet Street, and the one with the grandest literary heritage. Although it is, to be honest, a bit of a dive. As all bars with journalistic heritage should be. This was the first pub I headed to in the UK when I was old enough to add such establishments to my sightseeing list. It was the spiritual brother to the journalistic mecca of my college days, Chicago's Billy Goat Tavern ... just several hundred years older and with heaps more fame.

Dr. Johnson lived around the corner and is said to have come here often. Legend has him knocking back a pint while debating definitions for his famous dictionary, Boswell at his side taking notes for his equally famous biography. Oliver Goldsmith, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens were all supposed to have been regulars, too. It is, quite simply, a place of literary legend.

It's also a fine place to meet up with friends for a pint ... even those who don't have a journalistic education to inspire them. Unlike no other pub in London, the Cheese is a dark labyrinth of small, connected rooms with no natural light. It is dark and gloomy, but magnificently so, with wooden panelling and guttering candles suggesting that the rougher days of Georgian London aren't actually that far away. The sub-division into small rooms means it never gets too loud; if you're lucky enough to find a seat then it always seems cozy.

The basement offers another range of rooms, these reputed to have been the vaulted cellars of a 13th century Carmelite monastery. I shudder to think what the poor nuns would think of the antics and conversations that happen here today and punters shift pint after pint from bar to their chosen dark corners. I prefer to contemplate my literary heroes who, I hope, would be inspired to join and contribute to our conversations if their shades happened by.

Of course, the people we really should be remembering are the unnamed hacks, jobbers and ghost writers of centuries past. I doubt the press releases, white papers, web articles and other marketing ephemera we crank out will ever be considered literature, or rise us to the ranks of the famous. The unnamed are the ones who are our spiritual brothers. Until such time as any of us win the lottery, quit the rat race and retire to write something spectacular. But in the mean time ... we can give thanks that we are employed marketers and not starving artists, and we can hope that the ghosts of Fleet Street inspire our efforts. No matter how humble.

Vianden is a fairy tale castle well worth the hike

Last entry I told you about the Northern European Fusion that is Luxembourg's fine food. The fusion concept applies to the country's architecture as well, nowhere more so than in the achingly picturesque village of Vianden.

Vianden lies in the northeast of the country, near the German border. It occupies a stony promontory overlooking the river Ours, a perfect location for a substantial castle. This one is of the fairy tale variety, a jumble of towers, conical roofs and looming walls on a high outcropping above the river. It has a bit of Neuschwanstein about it, yet was all the more pleasant to me because I'd never heard of it. There's something truly glorious about feeling like you've discovered a place. The feeling of discovery was exacerbated by the fact that we were two of perhaps only 20 tourists roaming the castle halls on that gloomy December day. (I've borrowed someone else's photo from a more clement time of year for the illustration at right.)

It's a substantial hike to the castle from the nearest car park; perhaps 200 yards up a fairly steep incline. Then through the gatehouse and you're climbing another 200 yards through castle courtyards over rough cobbles. The tour of the castle itself requires clambering up and down lots of long, steep staircases. This is not a place for the unfit, or, truth be told, for the heavily pregnant. My friend Cora had to take things very slowly.

It is, however, worth the exertion. Everything is in a glorious state of repair, for good reason. Despite its rich history dating back to the Middle Ages, most of what you see at Vianden today is a reconstruction achieved in the 1970s and '80s. Which also explains why, once you're inside, the visit is mainly about the raw architecture of rooms rather than furniture or decoration. There's a procession of lofty halls roofed with impressive Gothic vaulting. One houses a pleasant collection of church vestments and gold and silver ceremonial objects. Another shows off armour and weapons. There's a kitchen, oddly placed in the centre of the building, kitted out to demonstrate life in "olden days". A dining room and bedroom are the only other furnished rooms. Elsewhere rooms have been used as museums to the house of Nassau-Orange, owners of the castle who managed to end up on the thrones of the Netherlands and England as well as running the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

At the very top of the castle are two long halls given over to photographs: the first showing the restoration and the second all the famous people and heads of state who've visited. Clearly, this is where anywhere important is brought on official visits. It's fascinating to compare the ruined shell in the photos to what you see today. The best part of this section of the castle, however, is the magnificent views from windows at the top of the photo to the left. You are now at the highest point, a dizzying distance above the tiny town below and able to see for miles over hill and valley.

The castle's two finest features sit side by side. First is the medieval chapel, refurbished a century before the other restorations by Viollet-Le-Duc. That French master of neo-Gothicism last made his appearance in this blog at Vezelay, where he was responsible for much of the abbey we see today. Here at Vianden he was making a point about the importance of medieval paintwork, reminding us that Gothic masterpieces were anything put pale and white. The small but lofty space is vividly picked out in orange, yellow and grey, giving you the feeling you're standing inside some giant, upturned orchid. It's a lovely space that manages to be both beautiful and contemplative. And, on our visit, very, very cold.

The approach from the main body of the castle to the chapel is through a magnificent open loggia, at least two generous stories high, punctuated on each side by large windows framed with trefoil arches. This is called the Byzantine passage, presumably after the wife of one of the 15th century counts who was also daughter to the emperor of Constantinople. It's easy to imagine her insisting on this gracious piece of architecture to enliven her primary residence. The windows on one side look down on the village and river below, and on the other open up onto a rooftop terrace filled with potted plants and trees. There are rampart walks here that give you further fine views of the town below, as well as more interesting angles on the castle's picturesque exterior. It was beautiful on a grim and grey December day; it must be one of the loveliest spots in Luxembourg in summer.

The town of Vianden is just as charming as the castle, winding away down the hillside like a tail wrapped around the animal above. The architecture is a pastiche of German and French, and well worth a stroll. At the bottom of the hill a bridge crosses the river and you'll find the Hotel Victor Hugo, commemorating the fact that the famous novelist spent several holidays here and was an early proponent of Vianden's restoration. Certainly it's easy to imagine the place inspiring Quasimodo. Vianden is the kind of vastly atmospheric, enchanted location you usually only get in novels or film sets.