By Jove another week is nearly over and the weekend is drawing near. My how the time is flying by.

More worryingly there's only five weeks or so to go to Christmas. Indeed next week will see the switching on of the Christmas lights in Wycombe town centre.

I always look forward to 'switch-on Thursday' when from late morning onwards the town centre is invaded with fairground rides and the hum of mobile generators fills the air.

Of course the actual switch on takes place later in the evening long after most of the town centre workers have gone home so we all conveniently miss the excitement.

Surprisingly there are very few shops with Christmas decorations up and in the shops that do have them the decorations are very sparse.

Once upon a time the town centre retailers were raring to go with the Christmas goods in some cases as early as September. I guess the poor economic climate has put pay to over ambitiously early festive sales.

You would expect the run-up to Christmas to be a prosperous time for the town centre but in the last week or so several town centre shops have closed down or are in the process of closing.

The other day I noticed the sweet shop in the complex was holding a closing down sale, yesterday it was being cleared of its fixtures and fittings.

The home ware shop opposite the chemist in the old Octagon has closed and a shop selling silver jewellery opposite the record shop is also displaying closing down notices.

For businesses to close at this time of year says an awful lot about the economic state of health in the town.

With the way things are going the words 'closing down' will be more frequently displayed in Wycombe than the words 'Merry Christmas'.

Yesterday my good self searched for details of the free festive parking days in Wycombe's municipal car parks but despite being so close to Christmas I was unable to find the information.

Surely it's not rocket science to decide which days there will be free parking and announce the dates in a timely manner? Sadly that simple exercise seems too difficult for the powers that be in Wycombe.

Failure to get the free parking schedule made public by the beginning of November is yet another example of the slack and slipshod way things happen in Wycombe. By the time Wycombe has the dates out the shoppers will have gone elsewhere!

If your truly was in charge every Wednesday afternoon from the beginning of November would be a free parking afternoon.

Unless we encourage shoppers to visit Wycombe then yet more businesses are likely to close and the spectre of stagnation will take an even tighter grip on the town.

What do you think?

*Don't forget to read my regular column in this Friday's edition of the printed version of the Bucks Free Press!