Too early for Christmas thinking!

It's only October, but of course, for retailers that means they'll already have Christmas stock on their shelves, from Christmas gift baskets to those dreadful toys that only seem to appear around this time of the year, cost a fortune, and fall apart on Boxing Day. 

I'm not even thinking about Christmas yet (no longer being a retailer, thank goodness); in fact the main thing on our minds at the moment is my son's engagement party, which takes place on Saturday.   Of course it the engagement party of my son and his fiancee, but I found that hard to work into the last sentence without the grammar falling into the same number of pieces as those dreadful toys I mentioned above are prone to do on the day after Christmas.   Phew.

And then once the engagement party is over, we have more of Grimhilda! on our plate...the auditions, for starters (plus having to get another application in for funding before the end of the month).   So it's all go round here and Christmas is barely on the calendar....as it were.   Certainly not on the radar.  

Actually thinking back to the poor old retailers: we used to have to start thinking about Christmas way before October, anyway, as we had to start ordering stuff somewhere round May/June.   Isn't it a tough life being a retailer?  You're working so far ahead of yourself all the time, and always hoping that all the money you've forked out in orders will be well and truly covered by purchases - six or seven months down the track. 

Thank goodness I'm out of it!