Giffffffts

I remember the days when I'd have had all my Christmas presents bought by mid-October, carefully sourced online, ordered and delivered in plenty of time, and wrapped before Hallowe'en. I clearly had too much time on my hands. But this, this is serious organisation for me these days! To have this many gifts bought and wrapped before 23rd December is a major achievement. Though I still don't understand why I seem to buy more and more presents every year, despite me telling everyone that I'm "not really doing presents".

With lots of work commitments this week, including a wedding on Saturday, visits and deliveries on Sunday and heading home for Christmas on Monday, I realised this morning that I was going to have to do *all* of my Christmas shopping today. I headed into Belfast, got myself into my happy place and tried not to be driven absolutely stark raving mad by all of the crowds and queues. At one stage I thought it was game over, when the shopping centre alarm went off, and the tannoy started talking about an emergency evacuation. With all of the bombs in Belfast recently it wouldn't have been a surprise, and being Northern Ireland, most people just stood around looking mildly irritated for a while, not really evacuating and hoping that it would just go away. And it turns out that it did, after a couple of minutes the alarm stopped and everyone went back to their shopping.

I have to say that the whole process went surprisingly well, though it did take considerably longer than the 2 hours I had optimistically allocated. This little pile of presents is the result! Just one gift evaded me, my sister's, despite looking around every shop in Belfast for inspiration. But hopefully something will come to me between now and Monday and I'll be able to grab it while passing through Belfast on my way home. Otherwise she'll have to be happy with the gift of my eternal friendship... again.