We are well into the final stages of the annual Sales competition and the fiercest battles are fought in the womens’ league. It’s a sport you have to be seriously committed to to enjoy but it has little to offer as a spectator sport.

We are in our 82nd year and 61st year as a team, so that kind of experience must be worth a lot and Sylvia has competed all over the western world. I have dabbled occasionally, but as a lifelong salesman I am more at home on the business side of the counter than the competing side, thereby spending most time as a spectator.

The aim is to come away with the biggest bargain at the lowest price.

Sylvia has survived terminal, inoperable lung cancer and, last winter, two nasty falls with injury to her head and a fractured displaced wrist, both hospital jobs. She now has a hospital loyalty card.

This week Sylvia started her campaign at York M&S 2nd floor on wednesday and continued it at Ripon EWS on Thursday. M&S was the hardest but, after leaving me sitting on her 4 wheel walking aid near the lift, so that she knew where to find me, she set off with her walking stick which she can only manage with over short distances.

She trains on a measured diet of Paracetamol, Nitrazepam, Actonel and Calcichew-D3 Forte.

I wandered away with my desognated seat from the lift, but keeping Sylvia in view amongst the weaving mass of female heads so that I could return to station when she showed signs of returning, I had spotted a couple of lone, vacant looking spectators like myself and went over to compare notes. We all agreed that training for what we were doing should start at a very early age for boys. They come into it with no real training or knowledge of what is expected. Sylvia came away with a £7 skirt in a bag. Skirts are her speciality event.

The nearest thing we could think of watching was the feeding frenzy when you throw food into a fish pond, and you have to love fishes to enjoy watching it.

At ESW in Rpon, I sat next to a young policewoman outside the shop doorway and managed to persuade her to go in and and tell the woman in the rust coloured jumper that she would be arrested if she was in there more than half an hour and she came out with a smile on her face right on the dot.

The skirt is going back. It doesn’t fit.