WE’RE a little over a month to Christmas now, the television is full of festive adverts designed to make people cry, and our high streets are starting to swell with people heading out to purchase their presents.

We got caught up in it last weekend while out doing some actual, normal, non-festive shopping. The stores’ heating systems are cranked up – don’t act like we haven’t noticed – and you start to see people jostling for position. Their elbows rise up further, their game faces are on – for some, Christmas shopping is like a sport.

I’d have thought this would all have died out by now in the internet age, but some people still like to do it the old-fashioned, analogue way.

At the moment, I don’t blame them. Because the tipping point has been reached. More people are using the internet to do their shopping, which puts further pressure on the delivery networks.

We’ve had a number of parcels delivered over the last few weeks, of which only a small number have actually made it into the house at the first attempt. The delivery companies have managed to forget to deliver some, or deliver them to the wrong house, or whack it through the letterbox with such force that the contents of the package are damaged.

I guess it’s a good way to meet the neighbours, at the daily exchange of other people’s parcels, but I can’t help thinking that maybe there’s an easier way.

Amazon floated the idea of using drone technology to deliver their packages, where a small drone ‘copter would land in your back garden, despatch the parcel and fly back to the distribution centre.

When the delivery drivers can’t get a house correct, what hope do we have with unmanned craft? It would be chaos.

Next they’ll be telling us that, one day, all of the world’s Christmas gifts will be delivered in a flying sleigh by one man in one evening. It’s madness.

LAST week’s column, about the healing powers of Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Taxi, may have come across as somewhat glib on Saturday morning, all things considered.

It was written on Friday afternoon before the terrorist attacks on Paris, and in the cold light of day, saying that music “makes everything better” didn’t have the same effect when posited against the tragedy in France.

But some things do ring true in the week after the events. Not exactly Tijuana Taxi, but music as a force for good is a strong sentiment to take with you.

From the Eagles of Death Metal’s cover of Duran Duran’s Save A Prayer heading towards number one in the charts as a tribute to the band that played at the Bataclan concert hall and witnessed the death of scores of its fans, to the almost universal joining of hands in singing La Marsellaise, France’s national anthem to show solidarity across the world, we’d be a lot weaker without music in our lives.

BBC THREE’S Rent A Cop is probably the best thing on television at the moment.

The fly-on-the-wall documentary follows Darlington’s security mogul Francis Jones and his escapades in and around the local area.

Some people have said that it paints Darlington and its inhabitants in a bad light, but I think it’s a great advert for the town.

And for all the slapstick humour, the sexist comments and the unintended humour that comes from the show’s protagonist, he comes across as a warm and friendly person who only wants to help his community.

That’s not such a bad thing at all, is it?