Feet grow, bags do not

Two things happen in a household in the middle of August, and only one of them is a decision.

Feet grow. Last term's shoes do not fit, the trousers are short, the collar is tight, and the next size has to be bought before term starts. There is no persuading to be done here. That purchase already exists. What is still open is where it happens and what it costs.

The bag is the other kind. The bag from last year works perfectly well. It gets replaced because the child asked, or because a cousin turned up with a better one, or because a mother has decided that this year her child walks in looking new.

Growth demands. Desire requests. Most of the season's advertising is written as though the two were the same customer.

What growth demands is already sold and not yet allocated. It wants a reason to be chosen: the size actually on the shelf, a shop on a route that already has three stops on it, a fitting that can be survived with two children in tow, an exchange for the pair that starts pinching in the second week. Cutting the price on it mostly moves a sale that was going to happen anyway from one till to another, and pays for the move.

What desire requests wants a reason to exist at all, and it is not really about the child. Whatever is visible on a child at the gate is what the household gets read on, every morning, by the same people, for nine months. Nobody says that out loud and every parent knows it.

So the season's money lands almost entirely on the purchase nobody had to be persuaded into, and the one that was genuinely still open gets the leftovers.