In Belgium, an amazing 155 million kortingsbonnen – reduction coupons – were handed in to shops last year, saving shoppers a total of €123 million! Gemiddeld gebruikt een gezin 34 bonnetjes op een jaar tijd – on average, a family uses 34 coupons in a year. Not that you will be saving much: a coupon is usually worth 80 euro cents, but, as we say in Scotland, every mickle makes a muckle.

And I just happen to have a folder in front of me with dozens of these bonnetjes. The trouble is that to save you often have to invest: I see I can save 50 cents on cereal, but then I note op 3 verpakkingen – on 3 packs. I could feed the whole family just on the food with such reductions here. But just think of the organisation: you would have to cut up all 12 pages and match the 144 bonnetjes with a menu plan.

To help achieve this, on the back page is uw boodschappenlijstje – your shopping list, neatly divided up with headings such as beenhouwerij – butcher’s, lichaamsverzorging – body care, and ontbijt – breakfast. It must be worth it, and it would be silly to look a gift horse in the mouth, I suppose.

That’s why in Kortrijk the new shopping centre (called K for short) handed out 25,000 shopping bags with three million kortingsbonnen when it opened earlier this month. The manager was taken by surprise: “De eerste 5.000 waren weg in een half uur – The first 5,000 were gone in half an hour”. The scissors will be hard at work in Kortrijk.

And with people tightening their belts, knippen wij meer bonnen dan ooit – we are clipping more coupons than ever. You can even watch adverts on some TV channels and then download bonnetjes from the internet – oh, joy unbounded!

You might try to avoid them, but bonnetjes are everywhere – or they soon will be. If you take a stroll down Kammenstraat in Antwerp and happen to have a Bluetooth-active mobile phone, you will pick up digital flyers om de voorbijganger op de hoogte te brengen van aanbiedingen – to inform passers-by of special offers. Apart from filmpjes – short films and lopende acties – ongoing offers, you will receive kortingsbonnen, which I suppose will be detected when you buy something in one of the local shops. It’s all part of what is called “innovative retailing”.

And perhaps the day will come when you can cut out bonnetjes from Flanders Today.

www.bonissimo.be