The plan to do last year’s Christmas shop at Peter Jones on 23 December was doomed from its sorry inception. I was soaked by the time I got there, my plimsolls waterlogged, kept going only by my expectation of a quiet and civilised department store, rammed to the skylights with perfect presents. Instead, I found myself spearing a path through the seething, teeming, hostile masses with my sodden umbrella, and, worse — finding its stock all but decimated.
The claustrophobia that ripped through me was so violent that I was forced to run to the toilets to hide — and even then I had to queue. I shivered in the stairwell and contemplated defeat. What do you do about all those uncles? In-laws? The distant and slightly boring cousins, the godchildren you can’t quite see the point of, the friends who every year make a point of sending amusing but completely pointless trinkets swathed in pop-culture wrapping paper? Two words came to me like a revelation: The Tate!
Enveloped in the great gallery’s warm interior, everything fell into place.
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