Talk about bad timing, financial unrest considered and all. Nevertheless I stumbled upon these bottles of “champagne” for kids in the neighbourhood’s #1 supermarket yesterday. It goes without saying that the children of well to do areas need to acquire basic skills in handling bare essentials, such as the prescribed number of Dom Perignons a day (if not necessarily extra brut — initially, anyway), but, as mentioned, the timing could have been better, of course.

The local chief constable reported several credit crunch-related, self-inflicted homicides over the last month, the other day, with numbers expected to soar as we approach the festive season, just like the good old days (i.e. the great depression), which is as one might expect in the country’s wealthiest suburban area. Not a situation which calls for champagne, as you will understand. It’s really quite sad, of course, and I suspect that our supermarket’s kiddy-bubbly turnover is likely to flop big time.

But seriously: Credit crunch or not, what were they thinking? Not that I do groceries in other parts of the Oslo area, but I suspect bubbly for the kids is hard to come by elsewhere. Have the better-off parents gone completely off the rails? Granted, we’re talking nouveau riche here, but as Jim Williams puts it in John Berendt’s Midnight in the garden of good and evil,

I’m what they call “nouveau riche,” but then, it’s only the “riche” that counts.

I wonder. No matter what, I suppose that these days those among us who didn’t make it big on the stock exchange – and everything related – should be glad. It feels strange to say this, but I think it’s time we pay a little attention to those less fortunate: The rich, that is, and pray they make it through Christmas. After all, the “bigger” they are, the harder they fall. The funny part is I’m not even being sarcastic (there’s a first time for everything, I suppose).

Even Russia’s infamous Millionaire Fair appears to be affected. I guess Hell just could freeze over after all.