The Manhattanite/Orwellian nightmare before Christmas.

For the first time in almost a decade, I've done most of my Christmas shopping before the day itself. I still needed to get something for my Mum and to pick up some wrapping paper and cards, and so on Sunday I walked along to Stafford Street to make my yearly pilgrimage to Studio One and Paper Tiger. I browsed around Studio One, comparing elegantly minimal, Scandinavian knick-knacks and settled on a sort of candlestick-thing. My credit card went into the machine and I duly punched in the PIN. Into Paper Tiger; select some suitably tasteful wrapping paper and some cards; debit card into slot and enter PIN #2.

The sheer Sex and the City-ness of it all assailed my senses. Here I was, on a crisp winter's evening, dressed in an accidentally fashionable pea coat bought six unfashionable years ago, ferrying home designer charity Christmas cards (like they say in Friends with Money, why not just give the money straight to charity?), wrapping paper so restrained as to be conceited and an Ikea-but-more-expensive candlestick. I didn't mind per se, but my God, did I feel ridiculous.

As soon as the pseudo-respectability turn had passed, I started thinking about the bizarre act of tapping in my PIN to identify myself as the appropriate card's owner. The reduction of this act to typing four digits into a keypad make the world seem a step closer to 1984. To the Man (the state is too inept to count as such, while your common or garden retail corporation is continually trying to extract the largest possible amount of money from me and isn't held back by troublesome ethics), I am quite literally just a number. Granted, I've been just a number for years now - to the electricity company, the telephone company and my bank among others - but the removal of any truly personal acts of identification, like matching a photograph or signing my name, seems like a step too far.

And then piled on top of any vague metaphysical concerns, there's what would seem to be the oddly lax security behind Chip & PIN. To wit: four digits isn't a big number to crack; a photo would massively restrict fraud should anyone get hold of my card (and assuage my increasing feeling of nothingness to boot), and I haven't yet seen a keypad with a worthwhile guard to shield your PIN from prying eyes. If these four numbers are all that stands between me and the supposed legions of identity thieves waiting to relieve me of all my money (ha! Give me three weeks of Christmas shopping and I'll do it myself), maybe a token effort at bolstering their security might be a good idea, n'est-ce pas?

Anyway.

Bookending this journey through ill-defined concerns about self and self-worth (in monetary terms at least) were a couple of pleasantly festive evenings hosted by Jez & Max and Jeff & Devon respectively. At Jez's we quaffed mulled wine and ate homemade mince pies, and at the old flat we ate and drank ourselves into a happy stupor. All in all, a moderately inebriated and wholly tasty weekend. Roll on Christmas...