Sunday used to be a quiet and tranquil day to go shopping. There were not too many crowds, you could hear yourself think, you might bump into a couple of people and have a conversation and possibly a coffee, then you were on your way home or going out for a drive or something recreationally similar.

But, people do not go to church any more. You can hardly move – that is once you get a car parking place – in the shopping centres for the crowds of people. Moving around the specialty stores and the supermarkets with the trolley puts you into a situation of crowding that requires you to be much more careful than when you’re driving a motor car on a busy highway.

It’s slow, torturous, and snail-like. When eventually you get to a checkout, you tack onto the end of a long, long queue. The length of the queue is exacerbated more than a little by the fact that many registers are not open because of staff shortages.

A shopping trip to even a nearby shopping centre sends you back in time which has to be calculated by hours. Gone are the days of a quick up-and-down from home to the shop and back again.

And the crowds on Sundays are

unbelievable. It’s true! People do not go to church any more.