Done your Christmas shopping yet?

Have you? Thought not. Take my advice and get it done now or you'll regret it.

Last year's bitter experience hunting down presents for family, friends and a girl I'd all but given up hope on rekindling a waning relationship with was a stress inducing daymare I'd not willingly repeat.

A Christmas Eve Eve (Dec 23rd) shop, even in the most parochial, provincial enclave of the sleepy South can and will turn into the Rape of Nanking.


Even though I've been sensible this year and got my shop on early I still found myself weaving in and out of customers, like a racing driver in some cheap handheld LED racing game – the type, funnily enough, which well-meaning relatives who didn't really know me that well would heap on my head every Christmas without fail throughout my childhood years.

Didn't get my mum Beatles Rock Band in the end. I've instead got her Waterloo Bridge on DVD which is currently only available online as an import, so the disc turned up with Korean hieroglyphics all over it. It's in English with subs. I've got her some other nice things, some toiletries and some Covent Garden Spa gift tokens and other things. I'm not a total cheap skate.

Anyway, what kind of cunt does all of his Christmas shopping on the internet? Granted, if you buy things in the high street that you could easily order on your lunchbreak then you're wasting precious time that could be spent hunting down little trinkets and nick nacks in the various Diagon Alleys of your world for stocking fillers and other finds. That and HMV would have taken over a month to order WB in.

As well as some other, more expensive things, I got this tin of mints for my younger brother – shaped like the shield you get in pretty much every iteration of The Legend of Zelda ever. The point of sale fold-our card display they came in had Ocarina of Time printed on it – how fucking old are these mints? That game came out 11 years ago and was almost responsible for me failing GCSE Maths.

Luckily for me, I didn't finish the Forest Temple in the first sitting, meaning I got enough sleep and passed Geometry. Luckily for my brother, the mints pass their sell-by date in November 2011.

Get your Christmas shopping done now. Navigate away from this blog and get out there. If you leave it until the last minute, it'll be like trying to finish off the end boss without having gathered sufficient EXP.