I wish I were someone who was organised and neat, someone who excelled at making organised and neat lists, and then methodically ticking off each item on completion. But that will never be me.
And that is why, despite my best efforts, I found myself in Newcastle on a rainy Northumberland Street one year trying to decide whether I should spend £15 on a jar of pork scratchings for my father, or just scratch my own eyes out and be done with it.
I then queued for 35 minutes, gritting my teeth, bookended by, on one side, the (incomprehensibly but seemingly happy) father and daughter in front of me, battling with batons of wrapping paper, held topically aloft like lightsabers, and behind me a woman who smashed so many baubles during our time together, I can only assume she was juggling them. It is the sort of Christmas diorama that would be humorous if you weren’t locked inside it, so invested in your place in the queue, the time you have already ploughed into this dystopian shopping experience, that you’d give up your first born before you’d leave.
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