In the Grip of the Christmas Shopping Frenzy

Crapchester seems to be in the grip of the Christmas shopping frenzy.  It happens every year, of course, once we get into the week before Christmas, as people start getting ever more desperate to get everything they think they are going to need for those two days when everywhere will be shut.  Although, in actuality, these days most of the shops seem to be open again on Boxing Day, so it is really only the one day that people are stockpiling stuff for.  Absolute bloody madness.  Not that I behave any differently - I just get annoyed when I'm trying to still do my normal shopping and my efforts to buy regular, non-Christmas, goods is thwarted by the fact that packs of lunatics have stripped the shelves bare of everything.  It's like they've become so locked into the panic-buying Christmas frenzy that they can only assuage those acquisitive urges by just buying anything, Christmas-related or not - whether they normally buy it or not.  It's very frustrating.  But I've been attempting to stock my cupboards with all manner of Christmas stuff this week, too - all part of my eternal quest to be able to simply lock myself in my house for several days over Christmas, glued to the sofa watching dross on TV and not going out or having to have contact with other people.  It's my idea of paradise and the main reason why I observe the Christmas celebration is that it affords me an annual opportunity to indulge this fantasy.  

Now that we're down to the last few days before Christmas and the schools have broken up, it is only going to get worse.  Which is why I've been desperately trying to get everything - both normal shopping and Christmas-related shopping - done by today.  Inevitably, I've been thwarted, mainly by the inability of my local branch of Sainsburys to keep its shelves stocked with the most basic of goods, (this is a year-round problem - they really to make their minds up as to whether they are part of a major supermarket chain or just some tinpot local corner shop), but also by my local pharmacy's new IT system which, apparently, has no record of any prescription made before November.  So, I wasted a large chunk of shopping time, (during which the Christmas scavengers were buying or shoplifting everything I wanted), trying to collect a prescription renewal, but as the items were last ordered six months ago, they are denying any knowledge of me ever having been prescribed them.  Pointing out that they knew damn well that they had been dispensing them to me for the past five years did no good as 'what the system says' apparently trumps personal experience.  I tried pointing out that they had been re-ordered via their mobile app, which was telling me the order was now ready, which meant that it had been approved by my GP practice, but as the new system was denying it had ever received this approval, I left empty handed.  I now have to traipse back there (and to Sainsburys) again tomorrow, in hope that sanity might have returned.  I don't hold out much hope.