On Christmas Eve

It all started the week before Christmas Eve, a bracing, slippery December morning. The interval between heavy snow and pouring rain, in which breathing itself was an intake of chill.

Tying her scarf the way she always did, she was not unaffected by this change in atmosphere - after all, a cold or a flu virus is a most unattractive thing. But, as she stepped onto the luridly painted bus and reaching out to pay her fare, those kind of thoughts were immediately swept aside and replaced with ones of her destination.

There was a book store in town that up until the fifties had been a tea shop. In her youth, she had visited with her grandmother and been treated to cream tea and scones. Now that she herself was a grandmother, it was a great comfort to revisit and find it relatively unchanged. The young man who owned it upon her return had inserted labyrinthine bookshelves around her beloved tea shop, filled with masterpieces. His dream, he once told her over a cup of chamomile, was to be the next Tim Waterstone. She made it her business to visit the shop once every year to purchase Christmas presents for her friends and family - presents stained with the odour of tea leaves and fairy cakes.

This year she stepped off the bus as usual, ready for a chat with the shop owner. Fumbling in her purse for a handful of change, she turned onto the high street, where she was met with an unexpected and unwelcome surprise. The shop door was barred and padlocked. The store window, usually decorated lavishly with hardbacks was decorated only by orange paint. In the centre was a single sheet of paper written on forlornly with what she identified as the shop keeper’s own hand. Moving closer to read it, she gasped as she saw the contents.

Due to several conversations with her grandchildren and studies of local newspapers, she knew quite well of the latest phenomena that was sweeping the nation. This so called ‘internet’. What she did not, however know was the reasoning behind it. The point of it. What possessed people to spend their lives staring at a screen and furthermore being content? If that was the new generation then she wondered for the world. It was the internet that had caused the closure of her favourite shop - though not personally. As the letter said, it was through internet book sales. She did not need to read the rest, only needed to go home.

Two days after this event occurred, her grandchildren visited bearing sweets from the supermarket. Her eldest granddaughter, more acute than the others, was the first to inquire as to her mood. Much soured by the knowledge her favourite place was gone, she was confused by her granddaughter’s reaction - upon hearing the story, the fifteen year old erupted into laughter and told her that there was quite an easy solution to the problem in the village library.

It was through desperation alone that she followed her granddaughter there - never in all of her years of buying presents had one arrived late. In the back of her mind, she debated the various scenarios that could take place in the library - perhaps a sale of some description?

As they arrived, her granddaughter immediately requested a computer and bewildered she followed. She knew now that this was something new and in the back of her mind a suspicious strand flew. Typing in her details, her granddaughter beamed and asked what it was that she was looking for, leaving the old woman to realise that she was trapped. Trapped between the solid rock of no presents and callous internet. Internet which had thrown her into this mess in the first place.

Sighing inwardly, she pulled a chair from the next table and flopped into the seat. There was nothing left she could do. Reciting the names of several books and absently gazing at the screen while her granddaughter swiftly typed the names into the machine. It was a marvellous thing, she could not help but think - filled with colour and movement from various screens as her granddaughter searched, appearing like some kind of Siren before her. Her mesmerisation, however, was drawn to a close as her granddaughter called to her. That only one name was coming up to sell the books she wanted. Rather than recite it, she showed the web page onscreen.

It was the website of her beloved tea store, established the same day as the young man took over. Although she did not understand at first, eventually she took in that it sold the same books from the shop, but cheaper and in brighter colours. The authors of such masterpieces would surely have turned in their grave to see their fine works bargained off like cheap meat - the same way that she turned in her chair to leave the library.

Perhaps it will come as no surprise to you that nobody got any presents that year.