MODERN day consumerism seems to be obsessed with the idea that everyone wants to have everything yesterday.

Marketing men seem to be working on the basis that none of us have any patience and therefore are falling over themselves to get their products ‘out there’ – irrespective of the fact that some of us find it irritating beyond belief.

I hope I am not alone in being horrified that on December 27 last week my local shop was already pushing mini Easter eggs.

Apparently as a consumer I should be hankering after Easter products almost the instant that Santa has finished his rounds, pulled off his red and white stripy socks and settled by the fire for his well deserved cocoa.

And strolling through the city centre of Leeds on New Year’s Eve 2011, I was assailed by a poster proclaiming that a certain outlet were the first able to flog me ‘Official merchandise for the London 2012 Olympics’.

A quick poke about revealed that up for grabs were some fairly uninspiring T-shirts and sportswear, but I did have the opportunity to be the first on my street to be seen wearing the 2012 logo with pride.

I have to say that I have a suspicion that even in the midst of the coming summer there is a chance that I would still be first in my street to be wearing this clobber.

Nearly everyone I have spoken to seems to be treating the forthcoming Olympics with either indifference or a slightly tetchy ‘you mean the London Games?’

Admittedly what little canvassing of opinion on the Olympics I have done has been carried out in northern England – or to be more accurate along that bit of the M62 corridor that covers a stretch from East Leeds to Eccles – but so far the thought of the world’s best athletes hitting our shores seems to be leaving most of us outside the capital a little cold.

Perhaps it is because we know that because it is London we are going to have the Olympics rammed down our throats.

You can see the national media pattern following that of reporting winter precipitation – blizzards in the north are ignored but a light dusting that fails to provide enough snow for a solitary snowball inside the confines of the M25 is hailed as a disaster for the whole of England.

So expect to be told that the nation is in crisis as London is gridlocked by the Games this summer, while anyone north of Watford can genuinely say ‘Crisis, what crisis?’

And just a message to the marketing men. I did not buy your Olympic merchandise on New Year’s Eve because I have a sneaking feeling that I’ll be able to get those very same T-shirts for under a fiver come mid-August.