Difficult Music

The tree is upright and decorated, I've seen Mr. Bean with a giant turkey stuck on his head, I've gladly paid $9 for a Terry's Chocolate Orange (the white chocolate variant), and I'm grabbing the g.d. clicker box every time that commercial with John Lennon singing "So this is Christmas" over a montage of starving children comes on. I love this time of year.

The only thing I haven't done is gone shopping with my sister. The tiny doctor is in New Zealand, tumbling down crevasses and setting new lows in personal hygiene while on a mountaineering course. Every year we meet downtown during the peak weekend of consumer insanity to buy things for our parents and finish any other shopping we have left to do. Our secondary mission is to be nice to salespeople—they're the real saints of the season, having to deal with individuals who make themselves miserable over something as inherently frivolous as Christmas shopping.

Oh well, everyone's entitled to a minor Yuletide gripe, as long as they don't take it out on an innocent bystander. Personally, I'm still a little pissed that they shut down the Marks and Spencer on Robson. There was no better place to shop for parents.