The joys of Present buying!

In our family it is the custom to send Christmas wish lists round among the immediate family. This can be good and it can also be bad. Good as in one starts off having some idea as to what to get but Bad in that if you get left out of the loop you can find that you have bought the exact same thing on the list for little Johnny that Cousin Maud has. This can be disheartening! I think oh good I can do all that shopping in one fell swoop and then find that the aggregate total for buying presents off the lists for my nieces and nephews, and sister and brother-in-law is enough to keep us in food for the next ten years! And then if one does take one's courage in one's hand and actually buy something, immediately one has to email at least five other people to tell them what you've bought for Uncle Joe and hope that you have beaten everyone else to the punch! Where have the days gone when one went out and thought carefully about what one was buying and hoped the recipient would like it but never mind if they didn't as it was the thought that counted. Shopping could be accomplished in one afternoon or one day if one had a mega large family. If they didn't like the gift then they gave it away the next year (hopefully not back to you because they had forgotten who gave it to them), and if it didn't fit, ditto, unless you'd been canny enough to buy in M & S when they then rushed there in the January sale to exchange said gift and buy two something elses for the price! And if they ended up with several pairs of socks, hankies, diaries, clocks, you name it we've got it things, then tough! Such is life. Not any more. Now buying the annual festive presents is a fine art and requires meticulous planning. At least a cross referenced chart or two and one of those on the computer. My aged mother has just managed to send a present using Amazon to my son Andrew, TWICE! I have tried three times to buy something for my niece and each time been told that the delivery date will be after the 25th! My youngest nephew hasn't even got a list that I can identify with so it's toe covers for him! We are both rapidly losing the will to live.

Hopefully I shall live to fight another day! I can see that if life goes on like this my New Year's resolutions will all start: Give up......