Hamish Champ: Interest rate fears? Try visiting Hamleys, a month before Christmas

I'm led to believe that people of a certain age start to wonder about the afterlife. They ask themselves things like, does it exist? If so, what will it look like? Will I meet up with old departed friends? Can I get Sky Sports?

I don't know about Heaven but I've had a taste of The Other Place. It's called Hamleys on a Saturday afternoon exactly a month before Christmas.

This past weekend saw me squeezing my way along London's Regent Street with my eight year old son Sam, aiming for Hamleys so he could pick out some things he might like to ask Father Christmas for.

Once we'd shuffled off the pavement - whereupon I resisted the temptation to go 'baa-baa' - and into the shop we headed for the top floor and worked our way down; it was the only way I could cope - at least it felt like we were heading for the exit the whole time.

There's no doubt the range of toys in the place was second to none. But progress was positively glacial. Every floor was jam-packed. It would take us ages to actually get to something Sam wanted to look at, and then once we'd managed that there would be an aeon of waiting while he pored over every single item, bless 'im.

It was all Ben 10 and Transformers and Spiderman stuff. Not my bag at all. I did get quite excited, though, when we came upon the 'vintage' Action Man figures. They were just like the ones I used to have as a kid, although I reeled at the less-than-vintage £39.99 they're asking for the things these days.

One thing bothered me though. I try to instil in Sam a sense of right and wrong and of fair play and most crucially, of being polite. Sure, he's only eight, and once in a while he forgets to say 'thank you', but usually he's pretty good at that sort of thing.

So when adults barged him out of the way to get to some toy or other, or when he stood aside to let people through and got not so much as a 'thank you' for his trouble as happened on Saturday, well, I get a little miffed.

We could have played a similar game, but we didn't. Because it would have been the wrong thing to do.

Still, it was all rather depressing.

But once we were back out on the street and heading for home my faith in human nature began to seep back, ready for the next time we go out and it gets another knocking…