Today is the 1st December and things are hotting up in the shops. Kids are screaming, mums are tearing out their hair, dads are starting to ask themselves why everyone is crazy. Christmas shopping has begun in earnest in Paris and you can't buy so much as a T-shirt without waiting in a queue for ten minutes or more.
Of course I haven't experienced any of that, because this year I decided to do all my shopping online. I know that "it's not the same" - yes, it's better. No carrying anything, no waiting in a queue and no pushing through throngs of people with no idea what they want or where they're going. Being a fairly organised person in my professional life means that in my private life I'm a bit of a mess, and usually the warning lights of Christmas shopping don't arrive in my radar until at least mid-December.
Maybe I'm getting on a bit, or maybe I use up so much patience with my students during the week, but I just can't stand the thought of traipsing round Galeries Lafayette (as nice as it sounds on paper) with a million Parisians and two million tourists. The tourists are annoying because they don't know where they're going and the Parisians are annoying because they push past everyone at any opportunity.
So, I've probably accrued a delivery bill of more than 50€ in total, but at least I haven't left the privacy of my nice warm slippers.
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