blitzkrieg Christmas

We rush in out of the cold, the wind banging the doors behind us. Rain is dripping off our clothes as we push cross the marbled halls of commerce. We thought we'd been in a desperate throng on the High Street, but it was nothing compared to the forest of people we faced indoors.

Everything’s lit up and flashing. There’s a discordant mixture of noise – like the wounded are crying out over a festive soundtrack. The odd jarring objection, like an “oi!” or a "nah!" can be heard, as shoppers jostle for position.

We dart from corner to desk and back again, grabbing at items indiscriminately.


"It's the krieg" I told him when I rang up days ago.

"Eh!" he shouted back through what sounded like two pillow cases and a biblical wind. Clive has always has had the worst phones. Took me three years of nagging to get him on to a smartphone and even then he moaned that I'd introduced WhatsApp into his life and made a martyr of him. When it comes to avoiding memes, spam and junk-mail he thinks of himself as some kind of holy crusader when the truth is he's nothing but a grouch with a low tolerance for other people.

"Blitz! Krieg!" I shout down the atrocious line. I hold back from saying, for what would have been the tenth time that month at least, "you need a new phone", since it'll just slow things down. I wanted to get in and out of that conversation in the same way that I want to get in and out of the department stores.

Clive knows the drill. These two words, or one, are enough to bring him up to speed.

"When?" he shouts, though I can hear him a lot better now, maybe he's actually holding the thing in his hand instead of trying to grip it between chin and shoulder while doing some daft task (he walks his sisters' dogs, runs errands for his ex and puts in dozens of unpaid hours a month for his sort-of boss, Jane).

"Monday, 2 o'clock by the Old Market" I say, and, though I regret extending the conversation as soon as I speak, I venture to say one more thing, since the objective of the call has been reached "where you now?" I ask him.

"I'm on..." he says, but a gust of wind turns the name of wherever he is into nothing but noise, a howl from an electronic abyss, but he goes on to say "walking Wolfie and Chris" so it's far from a mystery

Now the Christmas blitzkrieg is here. We've met on time and come out of the worst weather I've seen since last winter. I have to take my hat off to him, though not literally - I'm only taking my beanie off because the temperature in the first department store is similar to poolside at a Canary Islands resort in August - because Clive is on it today. He has left all of his usual accoutrements behind. He's become a streamlined shopper, ready to be in and out within an hour. We have given ourselves this target, though in previous years we’ve never met it

We're in - the crowd is thick but we're ready to manage it.

"Should we split up?" Clive asks, in such a way that he may as well be rhetorically questioning himself alone in his flat - I barely answer him.

"Let's go!" I say and we march into the massed consumers.

Half an hour later and we're easily on course. We have grabbed at every shiny and nice-smelling item to which think any woman in our lives will take a shine.

We have a collectivisation policy to a point. Things have gone in the basket when we know we won't be giving it to anyone, in the supposition that it’ll come in handy when divvying everything up later. One of us will make use of everything that's left at the end.

There are double grabs. We cover more ground by moving through the first department store side-by-side but at a slight remove, mowing through the place like a pair of combine harvesters. If one of us sees something that looks generically decent for a sister or a mum then we'll take two in the hope that we can dump the extra one into the divvying process later.

We move on to the second department store with only twenty minutes to go if we are meet our objective. Since it’s a five minute walk, and factoring in time at the till, we effectively have five minutes to get the final items. There is a good range of sportswear here and our grabbing becomes less discerning than before: small and medium sized tops, headgear, quirky gimmicky items. We're hoovering it all up.

We make it. In and out of both department stores within an hour. Something to be proud of.

All that remains is the two hours we have allotted next weekend to divvy up and wrap everything. For now we take the whole lot to Clive's car, which he knew after last year to bring even though he'd have preferred to walk (even in this weather, the mad bastard). We put it all in there, filling the boot and his back seat. Then it's off to the pub.

Somehow these are the best times of the year. It is a massive inconvenience, but working together, the two of us, is like nothing else. We do our hour's shopping now, as well as the few drinks we have afterwards of course, and then next week we'll spend a couple of hours wrapping it all up and labelling it for our respective sisters and whatnot. Bingo. Easy-peasy and the best time to spend together, even if it is effectively work, or war, depending on how you look at it.