Suzanne Harrington: I'm being driven mad trying to figure out the logistics of Christmas presents

Suzanne Harrington: "Never mind, I’ll order stuff online in Cork itself, and get it delivered from there." Picture: iStock.

My partner phones to talk about Syria and whether the guy who shot the American health insurance CEO is a folk hero Joker taking radical action against a corporate system that profits obscenely from withholding funds from desperately ill people, or just a common or garden murderer, as I am wrapping presents.

Specifically, wrapping a book for my partner on the effect of modern media on the mind, and how the overconsumption of news is driving us all mad.

I am being driven mad in different ways – trying to figure out how to negotiate the logistics of getting Christmas presents to Ireland from Brexitland without chartering a fat man in a red suit with a small herd of reindeer. Initially I thought Jeff Bezos would oblige, until I tried to send truffle oil and something with a plug on it across the Irish Sea via the Amazon sleigh.

Turns out you can’t. Nothing to do with Storm Darragh flattening Holyhead Port – you just can’t.

Flying Ryanair hand-luggage only, I will be layering four days of clothes on top of each other, and carrying nothing more than a Kindle and a toothbrush; this is because the fifty minutes flight from London to Cork costs more than a nine hour flight from Melbourne to Bangkok. Carry on luggage would make it the equivalent of an around the world ticket.

I go back to Jeff, rejig my list to remove the truffle oil and the thing with the plug, click buy, and too late notice the delivery date: Dec 28.

And that was when Holyhead was still functioning. Bah humbug.

Meanwhile I realise something ordered weeks in advance from people who put your hamster’s face on your pyjamas has still not arrived – have I been scammed? It seems an elaborate way of getting your money, making you send hamster selfies. Never mind, I’ll order stuff online in Cork itself, and get it delivered from there. A fruitless hour is spent navigating shop websites that keep looping me back to their UK sites; by the end of it I am close to rage-eating all the chocolate coins for next door’s kids.

I find myself waking at 3am, full of questions. Is it ok to give someone a Lidl panettone? Why didn’t I make homemade treats to wrap prettily like I used to, back when I still had oestrogen left in my body that made me care about stuff like that? Is it bad to give a 12 year old girl lip gloss?

Can you give modern kids selection boxes, or has that been outlawed?

And why, oh why, can’t I send truffle oil via Amazon? It’s not Semtex. Will I write to Jeff and ask him?

I’ll write some Christmas cards instead. Straightforward expressions of affection for friends and loved ones that don’t require any engagement with unco-operative corporate behemoths.

Ah yes, the festive spirit represented by AI-generated scenes of snowy highland cows and robins.

Lightened, I skip down to the post office. That’ll be fifty million quid first class, love, says the weary post office man.

Or forty million second class, but they won’t get there til February.