I’ve been standing in the queue at the Post Office for what seemed like an eternity. The drone of once-loved Christmas carols over the music system is beginning to drive me to distraction, as I still feeling rather seedy from the Christmas party the night before. My shopping list seems much longer than I remembered and I am starting to seriously worry whether my budget is going to cover it all. The weather is extremely hot and muggy, tempers are frayed and there seems to be an endless stream of restless small children bumping up against my legs.

I’ve just come off the phone to my sister who has announced that, after months of family squabbling, it has finally been decided that Christmas lunch will be held at my place. Tension rises in me once again as I recall that at least one leg of the dining table needs repair and I only have five decent chairs.

The queue inches forward and my memory is jolted once again: that special Christmas posting box for Aunt Mary’s clock! It is probably on the back shelf and there is no time to leave the queue to find it now. ‘Bummer’, I think. This means I will have to come back tomorrow. But tomorrow is Christmas Eve and, aside from the fact that it will be much too late to send it, my time will probably be more consumed with arranging for the dining table to be fixed and deciding on the family seating for Christmas Day: not an easy task.

I finally reach the sales counter and am greeted by a cranky sales assistant who informs me that the cute little Christmas angel stamps I ordered last week are now out-of-stock. I leave with next to nothing.

The car is parked six blocks away (and that took half an hour to find two hours ago) and the bags hanging from my numbed wrists are feeling heavier by the minute. If only I was looking forward to a holiday but my tight budget, the long term effects of the cost of living crisis and the ridiculous fluctuating price of petrol over the last few years has made this idea impossible. All I want to do is to go home, relax and hope that Christmas Day won’t be as bad as the last one. Then, as every year before it, there will only be 364 days to recover ‘til the next one.