Sometimes the perfect present is a timely reminder that, even when it absolutely seems like it, all is not lost
I discovered the perfect Christmas present at work the other day after eating fish and chips too fast. I was wearing too many layers for the office, where heating is pumped from unusual angles bringing with it the smell of lasagne or sewer, and I was sweating. Partly, it was the layers, partly it was the meeting due in five minutes, which was about the future of our jobs, and I was in a rush to get a seat at our possible execution. By the sinks I removed a jumper and washed my hands, and joined my colleagues in a bright glass room. But, as the meeting began and my hands became fists, I realised something awful. I was missing a ring from my little finger. It was small and silver, in the shape of a tiny safety pin – I’d bought it 20 years ago on my first week at work and worn it every day since. Its loss struck me as ominous.
I am largely anti-Christmas present. I write this as a person who has helped compile numerous magazine gift guides, blithely sticking a cashmere sock beside, perhaps, organic sausages containing the Tibetan goat they were sheared from, beside a coffee table book about fonts, beside a hairclip in the shape of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and, for the dads, a rake. The guides have come to open up for me a crack of dissatisfaction that creaks wider with every caviar cookbook, every feminist earmuff. I write this as a person, too, for whom shopping has come to feel like a treacherous bloodsport, a person who once took shelter in the Greggs concession upstairs at Primark and had to drop a pin so friends could organise a welfare check.
Continue reading… Sometimes the perfect present is a timely reminder that, even when it absolutely seems like it, all is not lostI discovered the perfect Christmas present at work the other day after eating fish and chips too fast. I was wearing too many layers for the office, where heating is pumped from unusual angles bringing with it the smell of lasagne or sewer, and I was sweating. Partly, it was the layers, partly it was the meeting due in five minutes, which was about the future of our jobs, and I was in a rush to get a seat at our possible execution. By the sinks I removed a jumper and washed my hands, and joined my colleagues in a bright glass room. But, as the meeting began and my hands became fists, I realised something awful. I was missing a ring from my little finger. It was small and silver, in the shape of a tiny safety pin – I’d bought it 20 years ago on my first week at work and worn it every day since. Its loss struck me as ominous.I am largely anti-Christmas present. I write this as a person who has helped compile numerous magazine gift guides, blithely sticking a cashmere sock beside, perhaps, organic sausages containing the Tibetan goat they were sheared from, beside a coffee table book about fonts, beside a hairclip in the shape of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and, for the dads, a rake. The guides have come to open up for me a crack of dissatisfaction that creaks wider with every caviar cookbook, every feminist earmuff. I write this as a person, too, for whom shopping has come to feel like a treacherous bloodsport, a person who once took shelter in the Greggs concession upstairs at Primark and had to drop a pin so friends could organise a welfare check. Continue reading… Life and style, Christmas
