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.
