Monday 12th December
Reluctantly I had agreed to accompany my friend Barbara to go Christmas Shopping, and almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth I began to regret them. I had already done my own, well what little I was prepared to do; I only buy for a small circle of friends, and my Mother. I have a habit of buying early and inevitably by the end of November I am done. But Barbara is one of these quite disorganized people who seem to muddle through life despite leaving everything until the last minute. Two weeks to go and she hadn’t bought a thing, no presents, no cards (where mine were all posted a few days ago), no tree, and no food either, not even the almost obligatory Christmas pudding which I have stashed away in my cupboard from the previous year. One thing I learned from Grandma, a Christmas cake improves with age. She had seemed almost desperate on the phone, almost pleading with me, and I felt I couldn’t refuse. How I wish I had.
As she lives in Docklands we went shopping in the underground mall at Canary Wharf, and even though I had travelled to her house by Tube she insisted on driving the short distance and we parked two floors lower in a claustrophobic concrete car park. I hate shopping malls at the best of times, and two weeks before Christmas is far from that. I thought it was packed, but Barbara insisted it was quiet; apparently the Westfield effect . It may have been that as I was not needing to buy anything I was a bit jaded but somehow nothing I looked at was appealing; was it me or did everything look tatty and literally old-hat. I literally saw nothing I would have wanted to buy; we seemed to spend an age in tired old shops like Boots and Marks, where not only the assistants but most of the merchandise looked bored. Especially those box sets of perfume where you get a tiny bottle of eau de cologne and a silly tube of shower gel, which nobody really wants (it is shower gel, so why perfume it, it will be washed off in any case, so you are only making your plug-hole smell pretty not yourself) in a shiny gold cardboard box that is three times bigger than the perfume and at least twice the price.
And so many of the shoppers were literally dragging themselves around the shops, desperately picking things up, shaking their heads, showing their partners who invariably would shrug their shoulders or nod approval, just to get it over with and out of there. And kids, kids in pushchairs, kids being carried, kids with face-paint, kids queuing to see Santa, kids grizzling, kids being cheeky to their parents, kids whining for a balloon, kids being pampered and pandered to, and parents at their wits end.
And Barbara, sweet but chaotic Barbara, hadn’t a clue what to get people, or even who she had to buy for. Never heard of a list my dear? So, we ended up spending a whole afternoon slapping in and out of shops and buying very very little. At least we had a Starbucks, and I sat in my armchair sipping my latte and watching in amazement this ritual, no doubt being played out all over the country at this very moment, people desperately doing their Christmas shopping, we have 365 days notice of Christmas, but it still seems to come as a shock to most people as they wake up two weeks before the magic day and realise “Oh my God, only two weeks to go,”
So, Christmas Shopping, no thanks – I’ll give it a miss if you don’t mind.