THEORIES abound on what caused the large bang near Catterick Village in the early hours of Saturday. The soldiers understandably thought they were under attack from terrorists. Similar sounds were heard across the UK and in the US. Some said it could have been the sound of a pulse detonation engine from a spy plane.

My alternative theory is it was actually the sound of the penny dropping, or lots of face-palming, in millions of households after Black Friday.

In a moment of surprising collective lucidity, people realised that wrestling on the floor of a supermarket to save £50 on a flat screen TV, a TV that is just a few inches bigger than the one already taking up half your living room, is actually a fairly obscene thing to do.

Apparently, next year Black Friday will have a Hunger Games theme. The doors will open at midnight and instead of a pallet of Korean-made electronics, shoppers will have to race to a big pile of potato peelers, carving forks and rolling pins. Bargain hunters will then have to fight to the death among the pineapples and soy sauce. Only when one person is left standing will the store manager drag out the cheap tat.

On the subject of fake traditions dreamt up by marketeers in the US, we have recently taken delivery of an Elf on the Shelf.

It looks like a toy but is actually a scout elf which flies back to Santa every night and tells him how his or her young owner has behaved that day. Every morning the child wakes up to find that the elf has landed back in a different place. It's a rather cute idea, I have to say.

Or it was until our elf started showing signs of mischief and malevolence.

Yesterday, the youngest boy came down to find Sparkle was hanging from the lights covered in party popper debris. This morning, the elf had covered the kitchen table in breakfast cereal, which she'd used to spell out slightly menacing messages to the teenagers.

I fear that by Christmas we will wake to find the curtains shredded, the limpy cats dressed in clown suits and an alarming smell of gas.

You never got that with Bagpuss.