Digby Warde-Aldam

The plan to do last year’s Christmas shop at Peter Jones on 23 December was doomed from its sorry inception. I was soaked by the time I got there, my plimsolls waterlogged, kept going only by my expectation of a quiet and civilised department store, rammed to the skylights with perfect presents. Instead, I found myself spearing a path through the seething, teeming, hostile masses with my sodden umbrella, and, worse — finding its  stock all but decimated. The claustrophobia that ripped through me was so violent that I was forced to run to the toilets to hide — and even then I had to queue. I shivered in the stairwell and contemplated defeat. What do you do about all those uncles? In-laws?

I remember, during one of my last classes at UCL, the topic of conversation turned from the cultural implications of Algerian independence to the subject of life after university. Our lecturer, a grumpy ‘progressive Hoxhaist’, told us that things had never been worse, and out of the 20 or so students in the room, only one or two would have found any kind of full-time employment by the time the year was out. ‘But it’s not fair!’ cried one girl, ‘we’ve all worked so hard over the last four years, we’re all clever [speak for yourself, I thought], we all have debts and we’re just going to be ignored!’ ‘Who are you going to blame, then?’ responded the lecturer. The question was a pertinent one: who were we to blame?