Presents

In the aftermath of Christmas, I thought I might reflect on a few events about presents.

I am a very BAD present buyer and Jenny is good at that so I have for many many years given Jenny the job of buying presents on my behalf. If the present envisaged is a bit expensive she sometimes seeks my OK for it but I always say Yes to it anyway. These days the presents come from "Anne and John" but everybody knows who has selected them

But there have been a lamentably few occasions when I myself successfully chose presents. I thought I might mention those occasions

On one occasion when we were at Queen Bess St., I bought two reams of A4 typing paper, divided each ream into appprox. 10 quires, wrapped it and left the 4 packages under the tree before Christmas: Marked for Ken, Paul, Von and Suzy.

Now as everybody knows, kids feel presents left under a tree to try and figure out what they are getting. But my 4 packages stumped everybody. Even Ken was drawn into it. But when they finally got to open their presents, they were a great success. As Ken said: "It has got so much potential".

And on her 70th birthday I gave Nanna a much wanted present. Like most other people in the family, Nanna is a keen player of computer games. And computer gamers are very fussy about their joystick. A joystick that is not just right can cause them to lose a game. And Nanna had found one joystick that really suited her. So she had tried to buy another example of it for when her existing one died -- as they all do eventually. But she had failed. It was out of production.

But I had one. I had got it with an Atari computer that I had bought. So I kept it and gave it to her on Christmas day. It was obviously a big hit. Giving a 70 year old lady a computer joystick must seem odd but it was just right on that occasion.

And for the Christmas just gone I bought Anne a big glass frog. Being a nature-lover Anne likes frogs but being a woman she doesn't like thing hopping or scuttling. So a frog figurine is an ideal compromise. I just happened to see it in the window of an Indian shop. So when I went into the shop I sang: "How much is that froggy in the window?" to the tune of the old doggy song. Such good humour pleased the proprietor so much that she gave me a substantial discount on it!