Well hello my friends and welcome back to my bloggy world, I should start by apologising yet again for my shocking lack of updates of late, though as anyone who works in an office can tell you when you’ve spent all day working at a computer it’s difficult to motivate yourself to then come home and work on a computer again, not that I call this work of course, it’s just bile!
Anyway for those of you who didn’t forget (looks around with an accusing glare) this week saw my birthday, 24 years of depression and boozing, but while I was at my desk pretending to work while surreptitiously dismantling a bar of mint aero I got to thinking about birthdays and how we deal with them. Now don’t worry I’m not going to end up going into a discourse of the pain of ageing and how depressed I am about ageing because, to be honest, I enjoy getting older and more crotchety! No the thing I hate about birthdays, and I’m not going to shock anyone here, is the presents.
Now as any of you who have nothing better to do than facebook stalk me (and you know who you are!) will know this year I was really amazed by how thoughtful some of the gifts I have been given are but buying gifts is something I absolutely hate – and am terrible at!
Now I’m fully aware that my policy of only buying presents for ladies I wish to “Get to know better” (which is why one day I will buy the hot girl on the train a gift!) annoys a lot of people and I do hope people have realised that for the last few birthdays I have rescinded my “No chance? No gift” policy and bought a few gifts but I really do hate it. I have spent a while thinking about what it is about gift giving that I hate so much and I think I’ve come to a realisation. I am not slightly opposed to gift-giving what I dislike is the regimented fashion that we’re forced into it, nothing else in life is so regimented. For example if I have to go and see my dentist and don’t feel like it I can call up and feign gout or something and just simply re-arrange having my dental areas prodded for another time but can you imagine calling someone and saying that you haven’t been bothered buying a gift for their birthday and would you mind moving your birthday to a different day?
Maybe I’m being a little facetious but I have always found that the gifts I have enjoyed giving the most have always been spontaneous ones that I have got for someone purely because I thought they’d like it not because I felt under pressure to dash around Liverpool One desperately searching for something suitable and just in the end grabbing a voucher, the gift that surely just says “I couldn’t be arsed getting you a gift so I just found the shop with the biggest collection of stuff you might like and essentially put some money behind the counter for you”
Anyway I came to a realisation whilst musing on this thought and I have a new plan for the future of gift giving. Instead of having a situation whereby you have set days for birthdays why not just have a rolling birthday and that way you can spend the whole year looking for a gift someone would like? Of course that does sort of come unstuck when you need to have a rolling Christmas which frankly sounds a hideous idea where you are constantly bloated with too much turkey or in an egg-nog induced haze for most of the year!
I am, however, certain I can’t be the only one who feels this way, I mean who among us can honestly say they’ve never told someone “Oh no I did buy you a present but I……. left it at work” or something? The whole thing, however, is totally pointless because you know full well that person hasn’t bought you a gift yet but you let it slide because you know full well that at some point you’ll end up doing the same thing to someone else and like the proverbial flatulence in a lift nobody ever wants to confess to having started it and even if they did there’s no point because we’ll all have done it sometime and if we haven’t we’ll do it at some point in the future.
So my friends (and casual acquaintances) I say to you embrace the idea of gift-giving but don’t feel so pressured, buy that voucher but at some point in the year you’ll find a perfect gift and buy that too because nothing in the world is better than the feeling you get when you give someone a gift that you know they absolutely love!
This week Matt
- Had an exhausting week of work but a brilliant birthday thanks to you all!
- Realised University Challenge, Only Connect & Masterchef have all finished and wept.
- Almost flung his new Macbook out of the window because the bloody caps lock needs beating before it comes on!
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