Deck your halls with sprigs of folly

38 days to go till Christmas Eve. Unlike lots of people I know I love Christmas and am very much looking forward to it already. Or perhaps I just like winter in general. Definitely NOT because supermarkets began stacking their shelves with chocolate St. Nicholases and tree ornaments already in September, but simply because this is the cosy time of the year when you come in from the cold and thaw up with tea and biscuits, idly reflecting on those you intend to bake yourself, decide what present to get for whom and basically reinvent yourself as a domestic goddess. My enthusiasm will inevitably get a damper after the first snow when you drag tonnes of pebbles (not to mention the puddles of dog-pee-laced snow) into your flat together with the cold, but right now, I'm in a nice pre-Christmasy mood. On Sunday I visited relatives in rural Burgenland and apart from lots of apples and pumpkins I took some sprigs of holly back to Vienna. They're now prominently displayed in a red vase and serve as a real mood-enhancer whenever I look at them.

Like their German neighbours Austrians love surveys almost as much as they take pride in coining serious-sounding words and so every winter the media are full of statistics regarding your average Christmas shopper's preferences and - more important - how people are likely to cope with the phenomena of Weihnachststress or, even worse, Vorweihnachtsstress. "Christmas-stress" or in the latter case, "pre-Christmas-stress" refers to the panic that grips you when you are slightly challenged on the time-management front, Christmas wise. I always make fun of those pompous terms and claim not to be affected by either. However, when I looked into my Filofax yesterday to select a suitable date for a dinner with friends chez retailtherapist, I realised that I already had plans for every single weekend before Christmas. Oh-oh! No, I'm not stressed. I said I wasn't STRESSED, right!

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Last night, the 17-year-old girl whom I sporadically (i.e. the day before she has a test) give English tuition to cancelled at the last minute and mailed me the notes for her presentation on environmental problems for proof-reading instead. Yes, me = good-natured fool. I realise that this must be a sign of getting old, but I can't help despairing in view of such...erm...in-depth analyses. And no, I don't think she would have come up with something remotely more intellectual in her mother tongue, either. Allow me to quote: One of the biggest problems of the environment is the greenhouse effect, because of the people. Coal, oil and gas by the power stations, industries, transport and energy of the household caused the change of air, which is very bad for all people. (...)In these fuels it should be more power and less pollutant. The energy should convenient used. Consumers can get products which make it easier to use this energy convenient.

Purchase(s) of the day: Erm, did I say yesterday that I was not allowed to buy anything? Well, I've just returned from my lunch-break. With a big plastic bag. See, two jackets (for € 14, 90 each, it would have been RUDE not to buy them) basically imposed themselves on me. And I paid with my Visa card. Plastic's not real money, as we all know