Christmas is different this year

With Christmas on our doorstep once again, it's time to spend time with friends and family, enjoying a well earned break and some festive traditions. This year, some of those traditions have changed.

All the good stuff is still there for us to enjoy. It's the only (Christian) period of the year where every house is festooned with decorations, a tree, lights, and a feeling of cheeriness. nearly every meal is indulgent, nearly every drink is mulled.

In years gone by, these delights, and the enjoyment of the season was offset somewhat by the unpleasant side of Christmas. The crowded shopping centres, the battleground of supermarkets and the sheer effort of getting ready for the big event.

"Having a list... checking it twice" was not the job of Santa anymore, but of diligent parents with a family to buy presents for, and at least a few crucial meals to plan. Did you buy gardening gloves from Waitrose for Granny last year, or the year before? How old is niece number 2 now, and is she a fairy princess or a climbing trees type of niece? 

But in today's world of Amazon Prime... or even eBay Free&Fast... much of the drudgery of Christmas shopping has been consigned to memories of yesteryear. 

Making good use of Google sheets, sync'd across all my devices, I was able to keep track of the 30+ presents that needed buying, and with mobile apps for Amazon and eBay, plus mobile-optimised webshops becoming the norm, every spare moment was an opportunity to work through the list, and get everything ordered. Always for next day delivery, and as such, so much easier to track.

Working out what to buy was made much easier through Whatsapp messages with each of my children. Even Granny has got the hang of emailing links to present ideas on the web. In fact my family shares ideas throughout the year, mostly through whatsapp links - which are often discussed around the dinner table afterwards. And to my surprise, a lot of the messages are more along the lines of "This would be so cool for Grandad", rather than "I want this for Christmas".

I've also retained my self-appointed title as savviest shopper. For every present a price comparison is a few clicks away. Finding a great present, and being sure you've paid the best price, without cris-crossing a shopping mall over and over is delightfully satisfying.

Unlike fresh fruit or groceries, present buying is perfectly suited to the online experience. In grocery shopping, some control of quality and quantity is handed over to the store ... think choosing a ripe avocado, or receiving a mini shampoo bottle because you didn't notice it was 50ml not 500ml. At Christmas, present buying is a breeze. Assuming you stick to trusted brands, getting the right product is not dependent on whoever is picking that product at the warehouse. In fact, the process is mostly automated. Taking humans out of the loop is a very good thing.

This year, in particular, I've been somewhat housebound on account of a recent hip replacement and a doctor-enforced 6 week break from driving. But has that ruined my run-up to Christmas? Not a jot. In fact, it's given me the ideal opportunity to test-run a 100% online Christmas. And it's been a breeze.

As long as Ocado arrive on 23rd December, as promised, and as long as they haven't run out of parsnips, my Christmas is in a perfect state of readiness. In fact, it was that way by December 4th. Since then I've merely been seeing even cooler presents, and replacing them on my list.

It's a rosy picture but not without some downsides. The boot of my car, and also my conscience, is full of Amazon cardboard and packing paper. Amazon seems incapable of delivering more than one product per unnecessarily large box. I ordered three wall calendars, 30x30x1cm. Each of them arrived in an A3-sized 15 cm deep box, filled with packing paper. The sustainable forests that produced that cardboard, wept.

I'm also worried about the last mile distribution. I'm on first name terms with a variety of delivery drivers. Most of whom have been kind enough to mention how well I'm doing, having started to receive deliveries whilst propped up on crutches, to now being crutchless. But all of them were driving diesel vans, mostly old ones, often leaving them running whilst dropping the parcel. I imagine the current push for cleaner air in and around London is being set back considerably by this.

In years to come, I'm hoping that big data analytics can be put to task to optimise these delivery runs, whilst electric vehicles eventually replace the oil-burners. Hey, even drone deliveries might make a dent, if they become safe and cost effective.

So, small quibbles aside, I'm looking forward to a mostly stress-free holiday period having got ready for it with the least wasted effort, the most efficient e-commerce, and all well within budget. That all makes for a very merry Christmas.

Will the £1BN spent on G.Fast get us back to "TV which actually works" ?

Slightly behind the curve on this story, as a result of getting a hip replacement a week or so ago. And that will be a critical point to remember as I rant my way through the next 300 or so words.

After coming down from my lovely morphine-induced high I left hospital with a shiny new hip and a bagful of painkillers. Like many men, my pain threshold is rather low and, as such, I was in a foul mood for a little over a week.

Things that contributed to my foul mood:

- BT TV not working 
- BT Broadband not working
- BT Home Hubs not working

... and when I say not working, I don't mean not working at all. What I mean is that these services work fine most of the time. In fact I'm quite happy with my suburban FTTC service at around 36 MBPS. 

But what got me so riled up, whilst spending 14 hours a-day confined to the sofa was the internet news telling me that we'll soon have gigabit internet through G.Fast, whilst simultaneously experiencing a fibre broadband service that randomly stops working.

TV used to work. You turned it on, and unless there was a howling gale, it worked. All the time, with no drama. No troubleshooting, no settings, no routers and no wi-fi. 

Now we have a vastly superior delivery mechanism for glorious streamed HD content, which occasionally just stops, you know, for a minute or two. That, to me, seems a backwards step. It's a good job the emergency services don't rely on broadband, or 4G for that matter. Oh, wait... they do.

If the government wants to invest £1BN in something, it should invest at least a little of that in a proper Ofcom group to assess the reliability of the current BB & FBB end-user service that customers of BT and its competitors are actually offering.

In the same way the EE wants to shift focus from population coverage to geographical coverage. I'd like Ofcom to switch from speed and coverage measures, to "does it work all the time" measures.

Everytime you see a message saying "connection lost", "download failed" or "not connected to the internet". That is clear evidence that your provider has dropped the ball. Count up those occasions, for everyone in the country, and Ofcom would have a decent idea of how reliable each service provider is.

Come on Ofcom, I know its important to tinker with BT to find the best ideological division of its groups, but what we consumers care most about is whether what we've been sold, and what we're paying for actually works. Not some of the time, all of the time.

And when I'm still on the maximum allowable dosage of codeine & paracetamol, I care about this A LOT!