Christmas is coming, my brain is going splat...

... please put a penny in a poor Geordie's hat.

In which I discuss the joys of summer ('cause I forgot last time), the stresses of Christmas shopping over the internet, and the cultural mashup that is the Aboriginal Zorba!

Christmas seems to have come way too soon after my dear husband and I ventured into the world of joint finances. Toby keeps telling me he's "not a presents person" which is his way of saying "I think you should do all the Christmas shopping". But I have not yet come to grips with the fact that my money is no longer my money and that I can't just spend what I damn well like on what I damn well want to. I don't know what to buy for half of his family, and I don't know what is a reasonable amount to spend, coupled with the fact that I'm still not sure how much we have to play with once our mortgage and credit card has been paid, having only had one such set of payments which, in the case of the credit card, wasn't a full month anyway.

The good things about summer include Christmas and Australia Day

Nonetheless, I am, as usual getting into the Christmas spirit, although I missed the IT Christmas party when I went to Cudge's 90th birthday party last week, and then I missed the IT ladies' lunch yesterday because of my splattered brain. Clean forgot, went home instead, will explain why in due course. See, I realised that after whinging about summer I forgot to tell you what is so good about it. Well, Christmas is one thing. Another thing is that we get all the non-public holiday days between Christmas and New Year off work for free which is a real chance to wind down. Christmas doesn't seem as mental here as it is in the UK which I didn't like at first but am now beginning to appreciate. The other great things about summer are Australia Day where everyone gets together to listen to the best tunes of the previous year, drink beer, have barbies and generally celebrate becoming a federation. Crikey, what will they be like if they ever get to be a republic? And also being able to swim in the ocean at any time of day and the water is warm. Lovely.

What isn't so wonderful is Christmas shopping over the internet and I'm never doing it again if I can avoid it. Usually I shop a couple of months before Christmas for some lightweight items which I then lovingly wrap, stick in a huge box and send to my Mam and Dad's house, posting by the end of November or beginning of December. I used to think about Christmas only once my birthday was done with so it took me a couple of years to get into this new routine but now I quite enjoy it as it helps me get into the Christmas spirit. Plus, once you hit thirty, birthdays are less significant. This year has been so crazily busy though, and what with being homeless and moving house all around the time I would usually be doing my Christmas shopping, plus having a new niece and a friend's wedding to shop for, well it just didn't happen.

Online shopping craziness...

"No worries," I thought, in the manner of a seasoned pommie-living-in-Australia, "I'll just buy everything on that wonderful super-information-highway known as the internet. I shall enter the web 2.0 world of easy, interactive online shopping from the comfort of your own armchair," which may well have been the case had I settled for buying everything on Amazon. And I might well have been able to do this if I'd spent a little more time in the gift section - what doesn't Amazon do these days? But I had it in my head that I had to go to Boots or Marks and Spencer for my grandmothers. So I set about visiting a number of online stores, browsing for ideas, and constructing a list of potential gifts for every member of my family, of which there are ten that I buy regular gifts for.

No Boots for Buckle

Boots was a write-off right away. I didn't even really bother such was the effort required to merely navigate my way around the site. But eventually I managed to compile a list of prezzies from a handful of other sites.

Early last Monday morning I set about purchasing them, thinking it would take about half an hour. After five minutes I decided I was tired and had a headache and would call in sick. I planned to finish my shopping, then go back to bed before having a nice relaxing day, getting myself better and finishing some of my jobs around the house. No such luck.

Firstly, thinkGeek wouldn't take me to the payment section but I called Toby and he managed to do it from work (which is about all he can do with his work internet connection). Then to Prezzy Box where I had a few problems getting my voucher code accepted. No big deal really as it as a free £5 off.

Marks and sparks of frustration

I then trudged along to Marks and Spencer and keyed in the URL for the present I'd chosen to my sister; added that to my basket. Then I keyed in the URL for my Nana's gift. Added that to my basket. Discovered my sister's present had disappeared from my basket. Then looked into the basket and Nana's present was gone too. Strange. Added them again. Same thing happened. It was like someone was following me around the shop taking everything from my basket as soon as I put it in there. Tried a number of different ways around this; made sure scripts were enabled; used IE instead of Firefox; only went to one URL at a time. I think eventually it was this latter one that worked. I had to key in the product ID instead of the entire URL but you know... it's so long since I started writing this post that I can't be certain. Either way, Nana's gift then wasn't available in her size so I had to look for something else; the site (or the internet; or perhaps both) was excruciatingly slow; I kept adding things that turned out to have lead times of 4-6 weeks or be out of stock.

Back to the front

By far the most annoying thing about the M&S site was the fact that when I added something to my basket, it threw me into my basket too, with no obvious way of getting back to where I was. When I clicked on Continue Shopping I ended up back on the home page. It's the web equivalent of picking up a pack of M&S knickers, and being forced on placing them into your basket to look at everything else in there (just in case you wanted to throw anything out or get more of something; I don't care what else is in there, thanks, I'm just thinking about the knickers right now!) before being frog-marched to the front of the shop. What the?
-But I was in lingerie, take me back to lingerie.
-Sorry, you'll have to find your own way back.
-Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

EVENTUALLY, after many hours, I made my purchases, only to discover that I would have to pay £3 per item for wrapping! There were eight items for three people!! I didn't even calculate it because it would have been painful before converting to Aussie dollars. So I sent them to my Mam for wrapping. Thanks Mam.

I felt a bit bad about that so I decided her gift would be wonderful. I'd already picked out a beautiful blouse from Debenhams so I got on with purchasing that. Or at least I would have done had Debenhams not refused to authorise my AmEx card when using Firefox. And my Mastercard. And both when using IE too. Aaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh.

Next! Don't bother.

Over the road to Next to find an alternative blouse. Found a nice one, went to buy it, not ready for 2-3 weeks. Found another one; nice piece of jewellery to complement it; through to check-out. I asked if they could gift-wrap it for me but they pretended not to hear. It doesn't seem to be a service they offer. So I decided to send it to my sister to be wrapped. But then something in the terms and conditions suggested that I had to be a UK resident. I thought about trying it anyway, with Clare's address but then thought of the heartache I'd feel when it rejected my credit card because the delivery address didn't match the card address. By this point I was unbelievably stressed and tired and had spent about seven hours at the computer doing what I thought would be a thirty minute job. I gave up. I was so distressed.

Eventually Mam's present came from Amazon because I have absolutely no complaints about their service whatsoever. I've used them for years and, unlike the other shops, this is what their niche is and what they set out to do and boy do they do it well. If ever I have to do my Christmas shopping online again it's all coming from Amazon. It's just so disappointing that I couldn't get what I wanted.

To top it all off, Debenhams made two $2.35 transactions on my credit card which led to it being blocked. Still trying to sort that one out. Internet shopping is like drugs (but far less fun): just don't do it.

Well, it's been a crazy week and I don't know where my head's at. I'm really looking forward to a bit of a break... the 2007 reflection post will come soon I'm sure but this isn't it. I'm going to leave you all with merry Christmas wishes for your festive season. I hope you all have a great time and that Santa is very kind to you.

To close, I'd like to share with you this YouTube movie that's very popular over here at the moment. It's an Aboriginal dance group performing traditional dance moves (traditionally used to communicate and tell stories), with a few updated steps thrown in, to modern music, often incorporating music from other cultures. Here, they dance to the Zorba! Brilliant. Enjoy and Merry Christmas.