I started celebrating Christmas in March

It's not as weird as you think. Maybe.

Every year Christmas takes me by surprise. I’m not a planner though I have long been surrounded by people who are. I went to school with a girl who commenced Christmas card writing in October, a task she herself found joyless (why then, I always wondered, did she do it?), but one I was envious of nonetheless. Mainly because Christmas would arrive, classmates would hand each other cards, and… I hadn’t written mine out. In fact, I hadn’t even bought the cards.

I wish I could tell you that since school I have blossomed into a different person, one with a schedule and an organised iCal. Unfortunately the ghost of Christmas past (me) is here to tell you that no, I am very much the same person.

Christmas is a lucrative time for the book industry, especially if you sell special books, which I do. I hadn’t given this much thought and was surprised — obviously — last year when September rolled in October and slowly all of my most expensive, first editions books sold out. Ah, I finally twigged, late in November. People want Christmas gifts!

So I started looking for Christmas books to buy and found… none.

Of course there was none. All the organised people of the world had beaten me to it. I’d missed the boat, and now I’d missed the Christmas market too.

But not this year.

I started my search in March and by July, on one of the hottest days of the year, I was in my loft, flicking through a parcel of Christmas cocktail books I’d recently purchased. It’s a bit like buying a winter coat in summer — only you are silly enough to be looking, but in return you’re rewarded with the good stuff.

When journalists started compiling their magazine Christmas gift guides in July I felt smug when they reached out to me. Here, I would say, as if I was the type of person who lived an extremely organised life, just a few Christmas cookbooks I have lying around.

Finally, I was that person: organised, with my shit together.

Except, of course, I wasn’t. I’m not. I mean, I can’t be — the window cleaner has just arrived, prearranged by me, and I have no money to pay him with (it is also raining hard as he is now washing them).

Being organised is a nice facade but one I cannot keep up. I have to tell myself that being messy keeps life spicy and I’m just going to have to accept that.