This afternoon, for the first time, I tried to arrange a visit to Santa's Grotto. This is what having a small child does to you. I got a helpful email from Selfridges, telling me that 'booking was now open' for this special event. I laughed and almost deleted it (it's October) and in many ways I wish I had, because I could have avoided much of the heartache which followed. But I didn't. i thought - hey, I have a lull in my day, I can book tickets for this now! So I went online. Every single ticket for a Saturday and Sunday had been sold, already, ten minutes after the email came out. OK, I thought, I'll check out Harrods, they must have a grotto too, right? They do. It sold out months ago apparently. All the slots sold out months ago. Is this madness or what? So in a panic I clicked back on to the Selfridges website, only to see that by now, about 75% of the slots had gone .... a whole 15 minutes after the email came out... So in a panic, I booked a random weekday slot.

Is this just London? And I know this is a treadmill I can't get off. It's called Having a Child in London. Welcome to my new life.