All year my mother had been going on and on about how she didn’t have a decent tin opener and the one thing she really wanted for Christmas was a decent …..tin opener….and muggins here thought she really meant it.
An old boss of mine got me a sort of novelty electric dartboard of a naked woman, that if you hit it in the, er, bullseye went “ooh, that hit the spot” in the tones of a bored housewife. Bizarre. I thought it was the work of genius that she’d got me something so brilliantly inappropriate and terrible, she took offence because she really tried to get me something I’d like.
I’ve just got some galvanised steel bins for keeping chicken feed in. Guess what is going to be decorated with a bow and next to the Christmas tree for my wife?
Might put something nice inside though!
My mum’s step mum used to give me things that she’d acquired free, such as oven gloves that came free with Yorkshire Tea.
We had an auntie who used to make presents. One year, she gave my mum 3 pairs of nylon home-made pants that only just fitted my 5-year-old sister.
I once got a cheap perfume in a secret Santa that stank of toilet air freshener.
My wifes Aunt always manages to buy the worst presents imaginable for her and her sisters yet seem to get cool stuff for my boys like Transformers. I remember a while back they bought her older sister who was about 23 some leather driving gloves and a matching purse?!
My first christmas present to my now wife when we got together twenty something years ago was a mosquito net. We were off travelling a few days later and she seems to attract the critters in an unnatural way. I thought it was caring and appropriate – she still moans about it to this day. I learnt my lesson and buy genuinely useless shit which seems to go down much better.
I once got a girls watch as a secret Santa present at work. I am a well built pretty hairy male and was about 30 at the time. I assume there was some irony involved but nobody ever admitted it so I still don’t understand the joke.
I’m into all those things, not particularly into cars, no way I’d own a 4×4, yet I’ve really enjoyed the off road driving I’ve done and would be quite happy with that sort of voucher, so it definitely doesn’t seem that off to me.
black and decker electric tape measure from my mum
I was once given a cheap tape measure with a digital voice recorder in it. I think it worked 3 times then fell apart after a few uses as an actual measuring device.
I once got a GoPro type helmet cam from my brother in law. Thing is, he traveled lots with work and this was the most insultingly crap knock off from Hong Kong or the like .
He clearly thought I wouldn’t know that he hadn’t bought a £200 piece of kit but a £2 piece of shit.
My Dad and Step Mum must have forgot me (large complicated family) when I was 16 and hastily wrapped up some old books from their bookshelves, dog eared and dusty. Books I had read before, those actual books! While my siblings got normal decent stuff. Bastards.
A few years back I was having a really rotten time at work, working on some miserable kids games published by Microsoft Games Studios, who were thoroughly wretched to work for. I hinted as strongly as I thought I could that I really did not want a Kinect for Christmas. I hated everything about it and it reminded me of so many moments I would rather forget.
My now wife very generously got me a Kinect. It still makes me frustrated and angry thinking about it.
I think when I was 7 I got a bike….my own bike which I had had for years and had been my sister’s before that. My parents had taken it to the bike shop and had it repaired. That was my main present.
A couple of years ago my mother bought me Michael Crawford’s autobiography. ” You used to like Frank Spencer!” She said, by way of explanation.
In defense of a lot of these bad presents, some people (OK, me) are astonishingly difficult to buy for.
When I want something, I tend to buy it. The things I want but don’t have tend to be obscure and difficult to get hold of, expensive or things I don’t actually want that much really. This means buying presents for me is a bloody nightmare.
I’ve got some terrible presents over the years but I know that it’s partly my own fault!
My mum bought me a book a few years ago, on bike maintenance it was published in 1991! It had a banner on the front which said “now includes Mountain Bikes”
well just bought one anyway, may as well wrap it up…
Get a slow cooker recipe book and a basket full of some of her favourite ingredients too – it shows you actually thought a bit more about it (well, I did for you 😉 ).
Get a slow cooker recipe book and a basket full of some of her favourite ingredients too – it shows you actually thought a bit more about it (well, I did for you ).
a couple of years ago my mum gave me the kind of scarf that an air hostess might wear round her neck. She’s known me for 40-odd years and hadn’t realised that it wouldn’t go with my usual jeans and tshirts!
