Katyboo1’s Weblog

I would like to tentatively announce that maybe, might be (as Tallulah would say), I might actually have finished my Christmas shopping today.  Now, as we all know, just the mere mention of the hint of the idea will bring forth a flood of people who usually wouldn’t give you a drop of snot off the end of their noses, but who have now decided to join in with the Christmas spirit and give you ‘things,’ just to mess with your head.  They intuitively sense when you breathe that big sigh of relief at the thought of having finished it all and then pounce, sidling round to your house with some M&S short bread in a tartan tin (which their granny gave them in 1975 and they’ve been saving for just such an emergency), and an evil leer on their faces. Bastards. 

I will very probably live to rue the day I even let the thought of completion flit through my head in relation to the festive season, but what the hell, nothing ventured…As the therapists would say, I need to feel a sense of closure over the whole issue.  There ought to actually be a specialist branch of therapy that just deals with the festive season, Yuleists, I expect they would be called.

This is actually the fourth time in the last three weeks that I have ‘finished’ my Christmas shopping, and there are ten more shopping days left (I only know this because it was emblazoned on a giant blackboard in one of the shops in town.  I refused to buy anything from them on the grounds that they had no right to upset me like that), so I’m bound to have to go out at least half a dozen more times if I’m being honest.  I just like to flirt idly with the idea of being finished. 

I only had a few things to get today, but they were all for the difficult people (that makes them sound like leprechauns and the ‘wee folk’, but you know what I mean), so it took bloody hours.  The problem with difficult people to shop for is that they don’t get any easier as they get older.  In fact it gets worse as they creep ever onwards in years, accruing stuff they don’t really want, shortening your list of ever diminishing options and forcing you to go to more intricate and exasperatingly time consuming lengths to find them something that might just make them die with delight (or just die, which would be fine, because then all you’d have to worry about is a wreath). 

You just want to ring them and shout: ‘For F***ks sake, either get a hobby or go into a monastery and renounce your worldly possessions, you miserable old git!’  You invariably find that when they do take up hobbies, it’s never simple either.  They either take up something which is so specialist that you have to import all the bits from Japan, or mail order them weeks in advance, or they take up something astronomically expensive like learning to fly.  In these cases you can send them a card with a picture of a Spitfire on it and 50p sellotaped to the inside to go towards buying part of a nose cone.

 As it is you find yourself scouring shops, and now websites for stuff that at the very least you know they haven’t got, even though you know they will probably hate it (it’s a start).  Then you scrat around, finally coughing up twenty five quid for an ethically farmed, hand made Madagascan tea light holder which they will no doubt put in a cupboard, or worse, give you back next year.  It’s made worse by the fact that you have begrudged every penny and while you were having said tea light wrapped in paper that cost more than the bloody present, you will have seen a hundred things you would have been happy to get, but which you know everyone else will never buy you in a month of Sundays.

I admit that it is very hard to get things for people in these days of rampant capitalist consumerism.  As random old people who I seem to attract in droves like to tell me, ‘You young people have too much these days.’  I like to say something along the lines of: ‘Yeah, but let’s face it, wouldn’t you rather be E-baying your extra Clairol Foot Spa and making a few bob, rather than fighting with twelve siblings over a lump of coal and a shrivelled Satsuma?’ 

These things need putting into perspective. I really don’t buy into all that crap about the olden days being so much better.  There is nothing better about only being able to watch the test card for twelve hours a day and being forced to play knock out whist with your Nan on a Sunday because there’s nothing better to do with your time. 

As it is the time of year for lists, and I’m feeling a bit Nick Hornbyish, I thought I would share a few with you. Here is a list of the top ten things that I have bought people over the years which seemed like a good idea at the time: 

1.     Sponsorship of a spectacled bear at London Zoo (the one time we went to see it, it was sulking in its cave and refused to come out).

2.     A box of monogrammed Love Hearts.(I got the idea from Heat magazine.  The shame!)

3.     A day’s training at spy school.

4.     An emergency survival kit, consisting: tea bags, 1 mug, 1 teaspoon, bag of sugar, jar of powdered milk, packet of ginger biscuits, some fags and some paracetamol.

5.     A day learning to be a DJ. ( I was hoping they would go on to be famous and invite me to their gigs.  As it was, he’s still saving up for a pair of Technics Decks and that was four years ago).

6.     A pint of milk (it was a special request).

7.     A stuffed hamster which danced to ‘Kung Fu Fighting’.

8.     A hand made hatbox (never again.  It was a killer).

9.     A jar of honey and a pop gun (bit of a disaster.  The honey leaked into the pop gun.  It didn’t so much pop, as squelch).

10.A pirate’s hot water bottle. 

Some things went well, some not so well.  But you can see that I did indeed, put quite a lot of thought into the purchases, strange though they were.  As I’ve said before, I do think that if you’re going to bother buying things for people then the least you can do is actually think about them while you’re buying it, even if the thought is you wishing that they would have a horrible row with you before Christmas so you didn’t have to buy them anything. 

I am a huge fan of the internet for purchasing gifts.  I’ve left it a bit late this year due to prolonged illness in the midget population, but usually I like to do most of my shopping virtually, feeling smug and snuggling into my pyjamas while everyone else flogs about in the freezing cold snapping their arms off with loaded Argos carrier bags and unmanageable rolls of wrapping paper. 

The internet is a marvellous thing.  It can bring you into contact with some of the stranger elements of capitalist culture and make it possible to purchase almost anything on a whim. This is fatal for me, as I am a big impulse buyer.  Jason will testify to this, which is why he ended up with a hammock and a concierge’s bell desk bell for his birthday this year, and Tilly’s getting some, ‘Dissect Your Own Owl Puke’ in her stocking in ten days time.

My family are very good about it really.  I do get them things they genuinely wants as well, it’s just that I can’t help being seduced by the odder end of the gift market as a kind of stocking stuffer mania. I used to have a boyfriend whose family were terrible for never giving you what you wanted.  It was made worse by the fact that they always went to great lengths to ask you what you wanted first.  They would even request written lists with shops and opening times.  All of this would lull you into a false sense of security that you were really going to get your heart’s desire, only to find your hopes cruelly dashed come Christmas day.  The worst time was when my boyfriend asked for a remote controlled car (yes he was grown up.  Yes, he was a giant kid!) and I asked for some book tokens.  He got a briefcase and I got a nest of saucepans.  Deck the bloody halls! 

Here are some good stocking stuffers that I can heartily recommend: 

1.     Fortune telling fish (we used to have them in our stockings as kids and they’re strangely addictive, yet always unerringly crap.)

2.     Lights which act as indicators for your ears, so you can signal to people in the dark which way you’re turning and they won’t run into you (indicatears)

3.     Self-inflating whoopee cushions (genius.  Now I don’t have to share spit with the kids).

4.     Airzooka (a huge, dangerous looking gun which just blasts air at you and makes your hair stand on end.  You can get weeny ones for kids).

5.     Wind up nuns which spit sparks and waddle about (I believe they’re called nunzillas)

6.     Mugs which say: ‘Jesus is coming, so look busy.’

7.     Mugs which have a little shelf in the bottom so you can rest your biscuit in it before dunking.

8.     Miniature submarines in the shape of bugs which you can race up and down the bath.

9.     A telescopic fork which extends to a metre in length so you can pinch other people’s dinner. (burglar’s delight!)

10.An unnervingly awful looking cat soap which when wet and then left for a few days grows hair. 

What more could anyone want?  Most of these can be got from the excellent website www.hawkin.com or their shops and catalogue, Hawkins Bazaar.  Along with www.iwoot.com it is a godsend for the buyer of ridiculous presents, and has saved my bacon on many an occasion. 

I know I sound like a moaning old scrooge, and I am!  But there have been times in my life, thankfully many of them, when lovely, lovely people have put great thought and heart into buying fabulous gifts for me, and as it’s Christmas I really ought to be nice and mention some of them.  Here are some of the best things I have ever received: 

1.     A hot water bottle in the shape of a heart (I am addicted to hot water bottles)

2.     An Emma Bridgewater plate saying; ‘crumbs & crumbs & crumbs,’ etc. (one day I will marry Emma Bridgewater).

3.     A trampolene. (boing!)

4.     A day at the Sanctuary in Covent Garden. (I missed a treatment because I fell asleep, but it was still brilliant.)

5.     A laminator. (Laminating is just brilliant fun.  I would laminate everything if I could, specially the kids).

6.     A Terry’s Chocolate Orange (heaven.)

7.     A stay in the suite at Malmaison in Leeds that has a bath as big as a king size bed you can swim in.

8.     A weekend in Vienna.

9.     A pineapple (I was four.  It was a big deal.  I felt like the Empress of the Known Universe).

10.A Ray Mears DVD to protect me in times of need. 

As there is no denying the fact that I am also a churlish cow, we must not forget the other times, when I have received the most heinous of presents which have clearly been indications of the fact that the person who was buying for me either a) mistook me for their mother or b) hated my guts and didn’t quite know how to tell me.  Here are some of the worst things I have ever received: 

1.     A doll with both its eyes poked out and its head severed (Thanks Nan.  I’ve never forgotten it!)

2.     A second hand coffee pot with no lid (I asked for some silver earrings).

3.     A school desk. (never again will the words: ‘Surprise me!’ spring from my lips)

4.     A glider lesson (I never got off the runway.  Too busy having hysterics in a bush. Silly arse never bothered to check about how I would feel about being launched in a bit of balsa wood using a giant bit of knicker elastic)

5.     A wall hanging of the Maltese Cross made of brown and red hessian (I may call my autobiography: ‘haunted by hessian’).

6.     A vase that looked like a piece of someone’s lower bowel.

7.     A hand embroidered picture of sea creatures cavorting in a rock pool.

8.     A giant, inflatable banana (again, supposed to be jewellry.  You think I would have learned the first time).

9.     A pair of novelty slippers in the shape of hilarious comedy feet, that I fell downstairs in and nearly ended up in A&E.

10.A how to do belly dancing video ( I once foolishly announced that it might be fun to go to a lesson.  I should have kept my mouth firmly shut). 

My mum used to be a great fan of trying to get us to make home made presents for all our school friends.  This is fine when you’re in the infants’ class, and people expect you to be shit at arts and crafts and so make excuses for your terrible offerings on the grounds that they are ‘quaint’.  It’s also fine if the person you’re making a papier mache fruit bowl with matching lid (sorry gran) for, is related to you, and is contractually obliged to find the things you make appealing, or at least not throw them in the bin until you’ve left their house.  It’s not so fine when you’re reaching your teens and your mother is trying to persuade you that what all your friends really want is a hand illustrated packet of seeds that you have collected from your own garden and dried yourself. 

Now, realistically, looking back from the grand old age of thirty five I see how this would be appealing, but I also see that this is appealing to me because I am thirty five and I like to watch cookery programmes, try my hand at interior decorating and feign an interest in light gardening (especially if Diarmuid Gavin were going to come round). 

I am totally convinced that at no stage would this idea be appealing to someone who is twelve years old, wants to snog the arse off that bloke off of High School Musical or whatever the equivalent was in my day, and has asked for some crimping tongs for Christmas. 

Nevertheless, I didn’t have any funds of my own to spare, my mother was not about to relinquish her hard earned cash into my mitts so that I could go and spend it on my wastrel friends to further their cool life style, and we lived, as previously stated, in the arse end of nowhere.  I had no choice but to follow her advice and duly turned up a few days before term ended, with gaily coloured packets of seeds for all my friends. 

Needless to say, the word ‘unimpressed’ would best sum up their reception of said gifts.  Some of them got quite excited thinking they might be drugs, until I explained that nobody in living memory had ever gotten wasted on aquilegia seeds.  Some of them ate them, and I tried not to think about whether they were poisonous or not.  Some of them opened them the wrong way up, all the seeds dropped on the floor and I nearly got minced because they thought I was having a laugh.  All in all it was a spectacular failure of the most humiliating proportions. 

The next year I decided discretion was the better part of valour, provided no gifts whatsoever and used the excuse that we had suffered a terrible set back due to my dad’s drinking and we had had to sell the family silver just to afford Christmas lunch.  Wiggled out of that one nicely then! 

It never gets any easier.  The only people I satisfactorily found presents for today were the people I’ve already found presents for, and could go on finding presents for for the rest of my life because they are easy to buy for.  My mum and the kids are brilliant to buy for, in fact it’s so easy that I have to restrain myself on a daily basis at the moment.  We’re supposed to be having a quiet, moderate Christmas because we’re saving for a big family holiday next year, so I’m supergluing my hands to my pockets to stop myself buying them any more things, especially books. 

We all love books and there are so many wonderful ones out there.  I freely admit to having a hideous book addiction.  When we moved house in the summer I sold about six hundred on e-bay because we didn’t have room for them in our new house.  Since then I have tried and failed to keep my book spending under control and the numbers are creeping up again.  It sends Jason spare. 

My friend who is addicted to designer clothing and jewellery told me that she hides her purchases in the cupboards for a while and then does the: ‘What? This old thing?’ line on her husband.  She swears that it works every time.  I tried it, thinking that it couldn’t possibly fail.  He opened the cupboard to be nearly knocked out by the entire set of A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu and I was in the dog house for weeks.  I wouldn’t mind, but I only made it through the first volume before I lost the will to live.  There’s a moral in there somewhere. 

Anyway.  I must go.  I was going to wrap some of my presents, but have realised in my infinite wisdom that I was so pleased with finishing my shopping, that I forgot to buy wrapping paper and sellotape.  Pride always comes before a fall!