Christmas Presents Problems
I've just found a plastic bag hanging inside the cellar door. The bag's contents baffled me for a moment, and then I remembered Christmas Eve 1993, and the horrible memories came flooding back. Inside the bag were:
- A replica of a Forties-style radio
- A presentation box of sealing wax, ribbon and a seal-stamp engraved with the letter B
- A pair of clip-on silver earrings
- A pair of wide long-leg jeans, size 12
- An opened bag of party poppers
Have you heard about the awful woman who does her Christmas shopping in the January sales? Does such an appalling woman exist, or is she an urban myth? Everybody seems to know one of these unnatural paragons, although nobody so far has confessed to being her.
I am seriously thinking of becoming her myself. I cannot take the strain of being a last-minute Christmas shopper ever again. And when I say last minute, that is exactly what I mean.
I was in W H Smith's at 5.30 p.m. on Christmas Eve when the tills were switched off, I was ushered towards the door and the lights went out. I staggered into the near-deserted shopping mall and sat on a bench muttering to myself, surrounded by a slithering mountain of shopping bags. I am surprised that a charity didn't offer me a bed for the night. A gang of drunken young men walked by and laughed at my hat. (When I got home and looked in the mirror I understood why – something peculiar had happened to the brim.)
I started Christmas shopping in November in New Zealand, so nobody can say I didn't try. I carted three very attractive throws back to England, together with a 4ft-long wooden Maori war canoe – but that's another story. I then went mad in a trinket shop in Covent Garden; how smug I must have sounded as I announced to the indifferent assistant, ‘I'm doing my Christmas shopping early this year.’
How happy I was on the train going back to Leicester, as I gloated over the presents I'd bought, convinced that I'd got the Christmas shopping beast under control.
I compare the self-satisfied woman on the train in November to the pitiful wreck on the bench on Christmas Eve, and ask myself what went wrong. My family have various theories…
- I'm a masochist; I enjoy the pain
- I'm addicted to adrenalin
- I'm a lazy slob
- I'm a workaholic
- I'm a drama queen
- I'm the opposite of an anal retentive. Nobody knows the correct psychological term, but it's something disgusting, no doubt
As you may have noticed, I write lists compulsively, but as the days tick by towards Christmas Day, my lists become increasingly complicated. Do the children's presents add up to the same value? When wrapped, will they have the same satisfying bulk? Was one son serious about wanting a flying lesson for Christmas? Was the other son hinting or merely telling the truth when he informed me that his rock-climbing rope was frayed? Could I cast aside my feminist principles and buy a sewing machine for one daughter and a set of French ovenware for another?
On Christmas Eve 1993 I forgot every principle I've ever held: at around 4.30 p.m. I stood in a queue in Woolworth's, holding two bridal Barbie dolls and two pairs of toddler-size Mr Blobby socks. I can only plead temporary insanity, and report that on Christmas Day my granddaughters both stripped Barbie of her wedding frock, saying they preferred her in the nude. I suspect that the Mr Blobby socks have been pushed to the back of a drawer.
It was a traditional sort of Christmas Day: the record tokens were thrown away with the rubbish, the grandchildren played all day with the cheapest present (Plasticine) and the roast potatoes wouldn't brown, but I had been deeply scarred by the last-minute shopping.
Dad If you're reading this, the replica Forties radio was meant for you. It was made in Taiwan and after I put in the batteries that's all I could hear: Taiwanese. That's why you ended up with the book tokens.
Barbara The silver clip earrings refused to clip on to anything.
Husband What would you have done with the sealing wax and ribbon?
The wide-leg jeans I bought for myself – a mistake. I look like Charlie Chaplin in them, but I've lost the receipt. The party poppers were faulty: when the strings were pulled, something like multi-coloured cat litter covered the kitchen floor.