Last week on twitter I posted: 'Decided. This year, I will only buy Christmas presents in #SE23. Who's with me?'
So now I need to follow through.
The idea came to me whilst in Luton airport waiting for a flight. I had done a quick scan of the shops there, with half a thought to Christmas, but was uninspired. Over a glass of wine, I thought harder about who I was buying for and where I might shop. As I am increasingly keen to shop locally, I mentally thought through local stores and then decided to commit to just SE23 as my shopping limit for presents this year. Living on the SE6 border, I was tempted to add this in, but felt that I would end up buying everything in Argos and that would take the fun out.
My initial thoughts are that this could be difficult - especially for the men. (I suspect that Dad will get what I want to buy him rather than what he would like.) To be fair, I don't have a huge number of people to buy for: husband, Mum and Dad, Grandpa and lets assume the Secret Santa present for work - so I think that this becomes quite achievable. The more I have thought about it, the more optimistic I am. My aim is to get good value gifts that suit the person I am buying for. I am not precious about small independents - they just need to be in SE23. The one concession I will allow is that I can make something outside of SE23 - but that's not buying (well, you know what I mean).
So far, my list of likely places to procure fall into two categories - local fairs and then shops:
My initial thoughts are that this could be difficult - especially for the men. (I suspect that Dad will get what I want to buy him rather than what he would like.) To be fair, I don't have a huge number of people to buy for: husband, Mum and Dad, Grandpa and lets assume the Secret Santa present for work - so I think that this becomes quite achievable. The more I have thought about it, the more optimistic I am. My aim is to get good value gifts that suit the person I am buying for. I am not precious about small independents - they just need to be in SE23. The one concession I will allow is that I can make something outside of SE23 - but that's not buying (well, you know what I mean).
So far, my list of likely places to procure fall into two categories - local fairs and then shops:
Fairs:
Havelock Walk artist community on 1st/2nd December; Horniman Museum has a Craft Fayre on 8/9th; Forest Hill Food Fair on Sunday 9th; SEE3's craft fair on Saturday 15th.
Shops:
Bunka; Shannons; Sugar Mountain; Doopo Doopo; Maplins; Neroli; Aga's Little Deli; Finches; Dapper; Hills & Parkes; Jumping Bean and the pound shop that isn't a pound shop on London Road.
Others: (currently discounted due to who I am buying for but still in the frame):
Travis Perkins (bet I change my mind on that one); HOP framer; Best of Both Boutique; Marie's bags (or whatever it's called); Stag and Bow; florists; Topps Tiles; Sainsbury's; Boots.
Of course, the other difficulty is keeping the presents secret. So Mum, if you don't want to know what you are getting for Christmas - stop reading!
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