The internet is lethal. I have managed to do £150 of Xmas shopping before I even got out of bed this morning. At least, in the good old days, you went around the shops and had to hand over actual physical cash. And the reality of that would stop you in your tracks.

“It’s how f***ing much!??!”

Because wallets used to hold a finite amount of your finite amount of money. So you would start factoring things in like…

I don’t even like her that much.

or

And I’m gonna have to carry this shit around for the rest of the day

but

At least it’s done then.

or

I can’t think of anything else though

or

It’s my own stupid fault for getting married in the first place.

So you buy it. It matters not a jot that, as far as you know, you bought that person an almost identical thing a year ago to the day. You buy it. You stand in a queue whilst the bags full of tat that you already bought start to get heavier and heavier until you get to the front and meet a 17 year old who is currently risking her life from the covids just so you can see your wife/child/parent look ever so slightly underwhelmed but smile at you anyway for a second or two.

So you leave and ten seconds later find something much better. Which catapults you back to “How f***ing much?!?”

After about three rounds of this for every person you know in your life you struggle through the crowd (all of whom you want to murder in straight to video slasher movie fashion) and fire up the engine. Wait for the windows to clear and drive home through spray intensive traffic, with the windscreen wipers never going at quite the right speed and the slowest drivers in the world in front of you who all seem to be heading to your house for some reason.

But you’ve done it. At last. Now you just have to hide all the stuff. So you start to empty the bags only to discover that a strange transformation has occurred on the way home. Some things just don’t look the same as they did in the shop, some have changed into other things and there’s a whole different set of things that you don’t remember buying at all.

This can’t be right. Have I really bought my Gran lingerie? And is a combination foot spa/soup pot really a brilliant idea?

Dear reader you were likely expecting a calumny here. An assault on the internet and all that it stands for but no. I have discovered throught the writing of this that I actually love the internet at Christmas. I’ve ordered so many things from Amazon that I can’t even remember what they are so every day the postman comes and gives me a little surprise. It’s like a mini-christmas every lunchtime.

Yes, the internet is shallow and toxic and filled with idiots. But then again, so is Livi centre.

Merry Amazon Day and a Happy New Year to you all.