Christmas shopping: the beginning

Okay, so it's Christmas Eve, and I've not yet bought any Christmas presents, apart from Naomi's, and we've already had our Christmas a bit early.

The news has been full of doom-and-gloom warnings from retailers for the past couple of days. I like the idea of the retailers across the country being made nervous by the uncertainty that's been generated by shoppers realising you don't have to go shopping on the high street, except maybe for last-minute items you can't buy via mail order or from ebay. I'm no anti-capitalist, but I do like the idea of people generating their own market price (as with ebay) rather than being stuck with what the high street cartels are willing to offer you. That said, it's now so late, I'm going to have to use high street shops myself.

Yesterday afternoon, I was out and about in Cardiff city centre, and decided to get a coffee to try and clear my light-headedness from the couple of pints I'd had. Walking into Starbucks, with James H and Dom, we queued up for a bit, then I announced to the barista [how annoying is that title] that I would like "a grande latte, to go away". I seemed to have created a new, confusing terminology for ordering a hot drink, fusing the English form, to take away, with the American one, to go. And in so doing, it sounded like I really didn't want the drink I'd just ordered.