Wednesday 21 November 2012

a time of gifts

As December approaches my thoughts are starting to turn to Christmas shopping.  I haven't got anything so far, apart from the pudding (hand made by barn owls, ho ho) and some new Christmas tree lights.  The Systems Administrator got those in Tesco a couple of weeks ago, because noticing the enormous display of them right inside the door reminded me that last year I fitted the last of the spare bulbs to our existing ones when a bulb blew, and had totally omitted to try and source any more bulbs in the intervening period, so if another went then the lights wouldn't work.  I also remembered that last year the shops seemed to sell out of tree lights quite a long time before Christmas.  I was baffled by the choice of lights, having no idea whether we wanted fairy lights or LEDs, so left that to the SA, who said the former because the light was warmer.  Two strings of one hundred lights apiece may be too many, but if it is we can cannibalise one to supply the other with spare bulbs and should never need to buy any more tree lights again, which at five pounds a box can't be bad.

I'm rather worried about the tree, because I'm not at all sure if the plant centre will be selling them this year, or if last year's crop of tall, thin trees represented the last scrapings of the barrel.  The plant centre trees were always extraordinarily cheap, an excellent bargain provided you had a very high ceiling and weren't fussed about the tree not being very bushy, and having to go to another garden centre or B&Q and buy a normal tree at the usual commercial rate is going to be a shock to the system.  I asked the SA if we could chop down an alder that has seeded itself by the wildlife pond where I don't want a full sized tree, and have a deciduous Christmas tree instead, but the SA said that while I could if I wanted it would look rather Blue Peter made out of coat-hangersish.  Which it probably would.  But it would be free, and incredibly green.

Anyway, I haven't got as far as Christmas presents.  Indeed, the SA and I went today and finally bought the last part of my present for my Significant Birthday, and that was over two months ago.  The SA said on the day that I could have a piece of jewellery but that it would be better if I chose it, and that we might see something on holiday, but we didn't, and I didn't find anything I especially liked in my favoured craft jewellers in Colchester.  A friend had told me that there was a talented designer and maker in Thorpe le Soken, and sported a very pretty necklace from her to prove it, so I'd been planning to go there on a wet day and when I was in the right mood for shopping.  I found a necklace of smoky quartz beads with a silver and gold leaf pendant (it is made in the shape of a leaf, and decorated with gold leaf) which I liked very much, so took the SA back with me after lunch to make the ceremonial purchase.  I could have bought it the first time I was there and presented the bill, but that isn't the same.  The jeweller made it into a beautiful package while we watched, which seemed a slight waste when I was going to unwrap it again as soon as I got home, but was fun.  The quartz beads are cut with facets so that they catch the light and sparkle gently, and the quartz seems to change colour from soft black to brown, and from opaque to translucent, depending on the light source.  The jeweller is called Marisa Arna, she has a shop in Thorpe le Soken High Street, sells her own off-the-peg designs or will work to commission.  You could get something simple but good in silver and have change from forty pounds, then prices go up from there.  Her style is more bohemian arty than Mappin and Webb.  I loved it.

But that doesn't solve the question of Christmas presents.  Martin Lewis has written an article in the Telegraph asking if it is time to ban Christmas presents.  He argues from an economist's perspective that the social requirement to reciprocate gifts distorts spending priorities, and that people end up spending money they can't afford in order to end up owning things that wouldn't have been their top choice of what to buy.  Gifts should be for children only.  This is moderately amusing, though somebody (possibly Martin Lewis) has certainly made the same point in an article in a previous year.  It contains a grain of truth but also a couple of fallacies.  Firstly, it is possible by mutual consent and without having to invest in a special app that sends out formal No Gifts requests to your friends and relations, to limit the circle of people with whom you exchange presents and the amount that you each spend.  Secondly, it is not necessarily the case that presents have to be Gifts, as in useless clutter that the recipient doesn't need or want.

I like presents, hence I am very pleased to be the possessor of a smoky quartz and silver and gold leaf necklace that until this afternoon was sitting in a showroom in Thorpe le Soken.  I am happy to be allowed to choose something I really like, though I enjoy surprises.  Provided they are something I want.  Another article in the Telegraph said that British women are the recipients of £100m of unwanted lingerie every year.  The Systems Administrator and I solve this problem by mostly giving each other books.  In fact, I give practically everybody books.  Admittedly, it is easier if you live with someone and can check the bookshelves to see what they've already got, but failing that if you stick to titles that were only recently published you're relatively safe.  The SA and I have pact about not buying books for ourselves within four to six weeks of birthdays and Christmas (except for really obscure titles that the other could never possibly think of) to make it easier, and I know at least one pair of friends who have a similar arrangement.

The Kindle makes it more difficult, without that row of spines to check out on the bookcase.  Looking at somebody else's Kindle feels vaguely intrusive, only one step away from looking at their mobile phone.  And I don't know why Amazon still haven't introduced the technology for making gift purchases of kindle titles in time for Christmas.  Another Amazon innovation I'd like to see is the ability to tag books bought as presents when you buy them, so that later on you could search by the name of the recipient and see what you'd previously bought for them.  At the moment you can only look up each order.  They go back an impressively long way, but it would be very handy to be able to check which detective stories I've already given to my mother, for example.

The most difficult aspect of present giving, and the reason why people end up giving and receiving Gifts, is when social convention dictates you have to give something to somebody you don't know that well.  You don't know enough about their tastes, or pet authors, or hobbies in the event that they don't like books, to be able to make a reasonable stab at choosing something that they might really like.  My default position is champagne and chocolate, but that's not foolproof.  Not everybody likes champagne, or chocolate.  We have a growing collection of bottles of port, given to us by people who meant kindly but didn't know that we don't drink the stuff.

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