It’s Christmas Eve. All around the world, men are walking blindly around shopping centres, trying to find something to buy for their wives. I shall leave aside, for now, the fact that you should have started your shopping long before now, so let me help you out a little with a few things not to choose:
‘Sexy’ underwear
Few of us would turn down something slinky from Agent Provocateur, but I suspect that’s not what we’re talking about. You’re standing in Ann Summers, aren’t you? You’re holding something liable to set me alight if I walk too quickly across a polyester carpet. Don’t do it. If it’s red, peep-hole and rustles when you pick it up, put it straight back down again and back away from the shop.
World’s greatest mum
Mugs, t-shirts, tea-towels… all manner of tat made socially acceptable by the fact that it’s nominally from my off-spring. Just don’t do it. Not that book from the latest sleep expert, nor that ‘cute’ teddy purporting to be from my first-born. Don’t get me the hand-printed plate, the night-shirt with ‘I’m a great mom’, or the mousemat with three gurning children. Save it for Mother’s Day.
Something to eat
A complete cop out. You may as well buy me a bunch of garage-forecourt-flowers. Oh, you got me those too… Seriously, chocolates are for Valentine’s Day and guilty consciences, not for Christmas, when I’ve already got a tin of Quality Street and three packs of After Eight mints on stand-by.
Smellies
Ugh. Even the term makes me cringe. What woman doesn’t already have a motley collection of bath bombs, bubble mixture and quaint objects that look like cup cakes but are actually made of soap? Now think about the last time you actually saw us take a bath… Well, exactly. If you must buy something ‘smelly’, make it something we can use in a ten-second shower with the children watching and the postman hovering by the front door.
Household appliances
I don’t even need to qualify this one, surely?
I know, it doesn’t leave you with a lot, does it? But then you’ve had twelve whole months to think about it, and it’s not as though I haven’t left enough hints…
Happy Christmas. I hope you get everything you wanted 😉