The Christmas that went wrong: I was hungover – so I bought everyone in my family a Moby CD
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A term’s worth of techno clubs and afterparties at university in Glasgow didn’t do much for my education or my choice of Christmas gifts. When I left the north of Ireland for the University of Glasgow 20 years ago, I threw myself into the city’s hard‑partying lifestyle with all the vigour you would expect of a Presbyterian pastor’s daughter raised amid the weirdness of 1990s Belfast. My first term was a whirl of dancing to techno music in railway arches and warehouses, making new friends at 10am at afterparties in the kitchens of tenement flats. I slept on strangers’ carpets, wrapped in my massive leopard-print faux-fur coat from a vintage store called Starry Starry Night. I wore a fluffy hat that doubled up as a pillow. I barely ate anything solid and rarely saw daylight – not that Glaswegian daylight is anything to write home about.
After a particularly wild week of parties turning into afterparties turning into pub daytime sessions turning into parties again, I woke up to the realisation it was 23 December, term was over and I had to catch my train to the ferry and home for Christmas. As I threw jumpers and odd socks into a grubby American Apparel holdall, it dawned on me that I hadn’t bought a single Christmas present.
Happily, there was a branch of Fopp just outside Glasgow Central station, which sold CDs and vinyl and strangely cheap cult-classic books. Walking around the store in a daze, my eyes landed on the new Moby album, Play, which had received rave reviews. I bought 10 copies and croaked a request to have them gift-wrapped, ignoring the quizzical glances of the checkout staff. I dragged myself on to the train to Stranraer and fell asleep with my fluffy hat pulled down hard over my eyes.
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