IT’S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS

So, ’tis the season once more. The “special” boxes of chocolates and cheesy nibbles are appearing in the supermarkets and the “Best Xmas Songs… Ever III” (So presumably, it’s actually either only the third best, or the other two weren’t the “best” after all…?) compilations will be getting dusted off (or downloaded… which does, of course, keep the dust off…) and blasted into my eardrums even if I’m only popping in to buy a carton of milk.

I wanted to write “bottle of milk” then, but I knew that, if I did that, so many of you would start to wonder what the hell I was going on about. “People” (and in this instance I actually do mean actual “people” albeit ones acquainted with my beloved at work, rather than myself) do seem to be rather incredulous when we talk about still having our milk delivered by a milkman as if we are living in the dark ages or something…

Well, of course, these times we live in are dark, and not just because the nights are getting longer, although that does help…

Now where was I…?

You see, I’ve managed to get myself all distractorated again, when I was going to talk about Chrimbletide…

Stick to the point, old son, stick to the point…

Or rather, I was going to share a few thoughts about Christmas gift catalogues...

You see, that is why I was aware that Chrimbletide was looming large once again. It’s on its way, like an unstoppable supertanker failing to make its turn and ploughing into a high street somewhere near to you very, very soon.

Every week, when I go to the newsagents to pick up my Radio Times a load of catalogues tumble out from inside it, and when I get home another stack have usually poured through the letter box. When I go to the supermarket or the chemist’s, even more Christmas Gift Catalogues are flung my way, and the inbox of my email is regularly clogged up with even more of those “e-flyers”.

I daren’t even look in the “spam” folder, even though it seems to tell me a lot about a lifestyle I’m obviously not living. Lots of eastern European ladies seem to crave my attention and my hand in marriage, even though apparently my penis is far too small, and floppy, and in need of either enhancement or chemical assistance for stimulation. Meanwhile, apparently, various banks which I don’t even have accounts with seem to regularly be massively incompetent and are forever losing all of my details and entering me into lotteries which I’ve never even heard of which I seem to be far luckier at winning than I ever did with anything I have actually entered in my life.

Reading a collection of those emails and you’d think that, for me, it was Christmas every day…

Getting back to my point however, (and not in an “enhancement” kind of a way) the strange thing I’m finding with all of those gift catalogues is that they are really, really boring, and they are full of the most godawful tat that I can’t really imagine that anyone would be all that happy to receive. Most smack of desperation of the “I don’t know you well enough to know what you actually might like to receive as a present so I got you this…” variety, especially those “gift bundles” of bathroom stuff which look pretty when you get them, but tend to look less pretty twelve months later when they’re covered in dust and you throw them away.

The so-called “Presents for Men” are always a hoot because we’re all obsessed with football, beer or golf, it would seem, and we all spend our entire lives wearing formal wear for which those cufflinks would be “just the thing…” Either that or we want to spend all of our lives in the shower, or shaving, or slapping on aromatic oils and fluids before we go into the living room and shoot down some remote control helicopters.

Toys for grown-ups seem to be all the rage now in a society where no-one seems to want to have to actually grow up any more. It’s probably just as well, because the pages of toys specifically meant for actual children all seem so mind-bogglingly dull and boring when I idly flick through them these days. It’s all tie-ins with TV shows and movies and electronic things that flash and buzz but ultimately seem indistinguishable from all of the other buzzing flashing things, and it all seems just a little bit sad, not least because you know that there’ll be households where pretty much every one of those toys is unwrapped come the big day, and many of them might never be played with again.

Not only that, if all the toys are much the same, where’s the fun in going around to a friend’s house and playing with the toys they’ve got and you haven’t? If everyone’s now playing “Killer Death Zombies III” in their own bedroom, where’s the individuality…? Where’s the opportunity to be unique…? And, most of all, where’s the fun…?

When I was a child I used to eagerly open up my mum’s “Grattan” or “Great Universal” or “Freemans” catalogues and turn straight to the pages which were full to bursting with all the pictures of children’s toys. In later, teenage years, I might have turned to other frillier pages of course, but back then it was those pages and pages of toys which I could only ever dream of actually having that used to fascinate me. The anticipation was everything and whilst I was generally very grateful with whatever toys I received, I can still remember that it was the imagination of what it might be like to have all of the cars in the Dinky catalogue or every possible Action Man outfit to play with or a mountain of Lego that fired my imagination and, perhaps, that’s why the colourful collection of a felt-tipped pen set and the drawing pads that came with them became my own escape route into my own little fantasy world.

When those catalogues started appearing this year, Christmas day itself was still a good three months away or, in more simple terms, a full quarter of a year. Now, I know that it’ll pass in the blink of an eye as we all panic and “try to get everything done” but if a quarter of a year can pass in the blink of an eye, each year can only be four blinks, and, if you’re very lucky you’ll get the chance to blink maybe three hundred times before departing for Shakespeare’s great “sleep” so spending so many of them running around shopping and panicking seems rather like a colossal waste of precious time.

And after all, it’s the thought that counts, right…?