Christmas shopping is often the worst thing about the festive period. Even though the shops start selling Yuletide products at the end of summer (visit Selfridges in September if you want to know what I mean), December truly heralds some remarkable feats of point of sale. For example in two major departments stores I ended up in today were overflowing with produce out of the doors.

I often find myself asking is who would actually buy this, why yes, it is a fantastic cake cutter, but would it not do better without the option of playing four festive carols with the buttons on the handle? Or this magnificent set of Santa-themed shot glasses; an ideal present for Grandma?

Anyway, I did what I had to do and got what I needed to get. It took me less than two hours and I'm very proud of it. I didn't even get annoyed. Well I did get a little bit annoyed at one woman who was walking in front of me with a push chair and no regard for anyone around her. She casually was running the wheels over people's feet and Christmas shopping, and using her elbows to widen her passage. It all came to a rather satisfying end when some bloke a had a bit of a go at her. Get in the festive mood, road hog.

I took a driving lesson yesterday. Previous experience with driving instructors hasn't been bad, it just could have been more enjoyable, and I have a feeling that this time around I'm going to benefit more from the lessons. I'm hoping to be done with it all very soon - I've got quite a number of miles under my belt now and I'm driving daily, I think it's more of a question of fine tuning in preparation for the test.

I'm in the process of uploading my photo collection to the new server. I've just set 3,003 to upload and that's only two years worth of uni shots. I'm not planning on having to move it again anytime soon.