HAVE you done your Christmas shopping yet? With just 12 days to go, the clock is ticking. Sadly for high street shops, it looks like
time is permanently running out for traditional present buying. This Christmas is expected to be the busiest ever for online retailing, with more people than ever preferring to buy their presents in cyberspace.
Online shopping sales have shot up
106 per cent on last year with total Christmas e-retail set to top £17 billion. Last Monday, was the peak with £370 million being spent on clothes, DVDs and electrical goods on that one day alone.
It's not hard to see why.
On the internet, you can browse from the comfort of your own home, easily compare prices between retailers and shop whenever you want. Store opening times, queues and city centre parking nightmares are a thing of the past.
Gone are the days when you run up an overdraft on parking meters while racing in and out of overheated shops just to be left empty-handed when your credit card goes into melt-down at the till.
New research at the weekend shows pulse rates soar during Christmas shopping, sometimes jumping to twice the normal level during a particularly expensive transaction. Add in the stress of being unable to remember sizes and not managing to find that Nintendo Wii you left buying until the last minute when your wife told you to get it in October and you have the recipe for retail indigestion.
We've all experienced the horror of Christmas retail meltdown. A few years ago I witnessed a particularly unpleasant spat between two women in Marks & Spencer. The cause of the festive friction? They both wanted the same turkey and neither was prepared to back down.
Then there is the annual fisticuffs over parking spaces in the middle of George Street when laid back librarians and mild mannered middle managers turn demented in their desperation to get out of the car and into a shop.
Online retailing dispenses with all of the above - yet something is missing. What e-retail fails to grasp is the fact that choosing a gift should be more than just a financial transaction.
Christmas shopping via the keyboard may be clinical and efficient but it's also soulless and dull. Half the fun is finding the perfect gift in an unexpected place or making the effort to trawl the shelves until you stumble upon exactly what you want. It's also linked to how much goes in to the choosing. The best presents tend to be those that require maximum effort, not just the fattest wallet.
I always give my brother the same things every year. It involves going out of my way to shops I never visit outside the festive season, but it's worth it because I know he appreciates it and now it's an intrinsic part of my Christmas. Ordering the same thing online just wouldn't be the same, plus it adds to our already scary reliance on the internet.
One minute you're selecting an innocent Christmas present, the next you're spending your entire life posting messages on the Evening News website and waiting for the men in white coats.
Professor of psychology Cary Cooper says: "We lead frenetic lives now and have the longest working hours in Europe so there is less time to shop." More than money or the latest gadget, time is perhaps the most precious gift many people have to offer nowadays and there are worse ways to spend it than supporting Edinburgh's retailers over the next week.
If we lived in Essex and had to rely on the horror of the Lakeside Shopping Centre, a preference for virtual retail would be perfectly understandable. But we don't.
Instead, just a bus ride away from most of us is one of the most beautiful city centres in Europe with fabulous shopping.
Add in a hot chocolate in Princes Street Gardens and maybe even a spin on the ice down at Winter Wonderland to relieve retail stress and you have all the ingredients for a Christmas shopping experience that is actually pleasurable, rather than painful. The Ghost of Christmas future would be able to see the alternative.
He could open our eyes to a Winter Wasteland where the city centre is empty at this time of year and the streets are jammed with angry white van men struggling to deliver internet ordered goods. But it's not too late to change.
As Ebeneezer Scrooge realised, it's never too late to mend your ways.
Had
a great time as mystery guest
UN
TIL earlier this week I'd never been inside the New Club on Princes Street. Perched high above the shops, the venerable institution is home from home for Edinburgh's establishment and very, very posh.
So turning up for a Christmas drinks party, I was on my best behaviour. Then I realised I didn't know many people. In fact, I didn't know anyone at all. In my appalling handwriting, December 17 had somehow ended up as December 11th.
So whoever you all were, thanks for having me and next week I'll be back for more.
Stai
n of separatism is Tory legacy
SO
the Union between Scotland and England is now more fragile than ever. We know this to be true because the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party came to Edinburgh to say so.
David Cameron believes an "ugly stain of separatism is seeping through the Union flag". As a result, the link between the two countries is looking "more threatened than at any time in recent history".
His words are probably worth examining carefully. Since the Tory Party is largely responsible for the strains and conflicts that led us to where we are today, he should at least know what he's talking about.
