CHRISTMAS... SHOPPING... TERROR!

Of the many things I don’t like for Christmas, because I’m primarily a curmudgeon, is the concept of shopping. Not that shopping isn’t a pleasurable, thrilling experience. But Christmas shopping is something else completely different. Sometimes, Christmas Shopping - or for Birthday presents, come to think of it, is Shopping with all the pleasure taken out of it.

Surrounded by people, all of whom push and shove and barge and push trying to find something, anything to buy for someone. In a situation like this, all you can do is bend like a reed in the wind. And hope that you do not break. You know not what you seek, or how to identify what you seek, but only that what is sought must be found, and that you only have one chance to get it right.

But there’s things to consider. Buying a present for a man is relatively easy. At least, it is for me. I am - last time I looked - a man, and all that involves is thinking about things that Boys like. Things. Things about girls, films, books, or gadgets. This becomes much easier when you just ask the bloke in question what do you want?

After that, it’s easy. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. He’ll just tell you. No fuss, no mess, and a wipe clean surface. Easily listed in order with preferences.

Whilst actually being extremely uncharitable, not to say stupid, that most certainly would be a surprise. But whilst women give you that answer, what they do have, is somewhere a massive mental list of stuff that they would most definitely appreciate. And you need that list in order to see through the year until its end.

But you can’t have it. Oh no. You gotta work for that. It’s not what you get. It’s the fact you’ve got to think about it. Pay attention. Think about what she likes, what she hasn’t got, what she might want. And sometimes, even when what you get fulfills all these criteria, you might still get it wrong, as I know full well through bitter, divorced experience.

There’s nothing more frightening - as a man - than having to think. For Gawds Sake! That’s what we fill our lives with football for. To avoid thought. If we start to think, we might start to realise that women don’t know everything. And then the entire natural order of the world is threatened.

So, cast adrift, alone in the wilderness, with nothing but a mission, but no idea what it is, or how to achieve it, the man is living in his very own version of Die Hard : Buy Stuff For Christmas. Improvising the materials by which he can save the world out of a wallet, lots of shops, and an imagination as bare as the cupboards of his kitchen.

STRANGER IN A STRANGE SHOP

With no idea what I was looking at. Confused. Like a caveman that cannot comprehend. Or a dog shown a card trick. I know what it is - something round / square / diamond-shaped, something white / silver / gold / reflective, but I don’t understand quite what it is.

Brains racked. Empty as the Dead Sea. Without a compass, a guide, a map. Operating by intuition alone.

A Present? Maybe. My spider-senses are tingling. I’m not sure what it is. Would she like it? Has she got it? Can I afford it? (I hate be so prosaic in my final question, but there are certain places where they don’t show the price on the goods. If you have to ask, you simply can’t afford it. Simple.)

But I found it. Whatever it was. Blind, my hands searching in the darkness. I found something : and whatever it was, it worked.

All this anguish. All this pain. All for this? My God it was worth it. The rabbit had well and truly come out of the bag. I had demonstrated thought, care, and a careful and astute understanding of whatever it was that she wanted. But it was so very nearly luck. So very nearly tragically, hopelessly wrong.