You can’t buy anything for £5 these days. Fact.
I discovered this recently, when Mr B tasked me with the purchase of a present for his work Secret Santa. Which has a limit of £5. And the name he’d pulled out of the hat? The big boss lady. Obviously. His emergency text read: ‘Unless you have any better suggestions, can you get me a £5 box of Thortons chocolates’. Surely the most predictable of all the predictable work colleague exchanges? Determined to come up with something superior (for someone I’d never met and knew less than nothing about) I stalked the shops for a good hour. Halfway through my trip, I called Curly for help. Supportive to the end, she advised me to grab a gift set from Boots (albeit number two on the predictable presents list, smellies do come in just below the aforementioned confectionary) and a present of equal value for myself for all my hard work. Renewed, I dashed to the magical land of gift sets that is Boots, only to discover the only box they could offer me in exchange for five English pounds was filled with Royal Jelly. Seriously. It’s one thing for the boss lady to suspect he enlisted his wife to pick, purchase & wrap the present. That’s endearing, in a “typical bloke, ha ha ha!” kind of way. However a present with connotations which suggest its origins lay in the dusty corners of his Gran’s bathroom cabinet? Not acceptable. This is The Office. Grudges are held, and pay rise battles have been won and lost over less. My shopping pride dented, I returned to my desk with a festive muffin, a weary air of defeat and a Thortons carrier bag.
But that was just a periphery purchase. The proper presents required shopping on another level. My list, with additional branches to denote birthday purchases and presents to buy on behalf of others, began to resemble a family tree, and contained strict instructions on how much to spend on each person. We came up with the idea of a £10 limit a few years ago, after one Christmas where the piles of presents were particularly obscene and included extravagance such as holiday flights concealed inside stocking fillers. Although the excess had been balanced out by some carefully chosen charity gifts (in the days before goats were considered passé) to allay some of the guilt, the experience did leave us all feeling slightly grubby. Cheesy as it may be, we are exceptionally lucky to have such a close circle of family and friends to spend the holidays with. We don’t need hundreds of pounds of presents to celebrate that. Besides which, having to tackle such an enormous stack of gifts meant we were disappointingly late making a dent in the festive alcohol. The first £10 Christmas was approached with gusto, and the gifts were innovative, thoughtful and exciting. The next couple of years, with the demise of Virgin Megastore and the constant churn of the BBC’s shit comedy train, DVDs became cheap to the point of ridiculous. This made present buying easy, but undeniably dull. And so last year we decided we’d all learnt our lesson, and we could dispense with the price limit and still have a sensible Christmas. We did. This year, probably one of the most expensive 12 months in living history, the price limit is back through necessity. Except this time we’ve upped it to £15. Laughing in the face of the credit crunch.
Sadly, in the build up to our prime weekend of shopping madness, Mr B fell ill. There was a pretty sleepless night where he ticked off all the symptoms of swine flu. However thanks to my trusty BBT thermometer we knew that he didn’t have a temperature. This led to a germy weekend sitting around watching Elf and eating jam roly poly, which was lovely, and an early Monday morning meltdown when I realised I still had 90% of the presents to buy and three days to do it, which was not. When I met him, Mr B was a terrible consumer. The first time I took him shopping to buy proper trousers for a job interview he nearly cried. However, over the years he has developed a love of retail, a thirst for bargains that is quite possibly even greater than mine, and a skill for dreaming up genius present ideas. This, coupled with my organisational skills, quick decision making and ability to get through crowds of people at speed, makes us a great shopping team. I needed him. Only this year all he could offer was vague encouragement from his sickbed, on the few occasions when he wasn’t asleep. And while I stepped up to the plate and pulled off some amazing feats of shopping in a couple of impressively extended lunch hours, it wasn’t the same. I missed starting the day off with a festive coffee while discussing our game plan. I missed splitting up to get each other’s presents, with instructions to meet back on this corner an hour later (because our all singing all dancing new shopping centre has zero phone reception). I missed sitting in the pub for a present debrief, crossing things off our list and rewarding ourselves with a festive pint. I missed that feeling of arriving home with armfuls of bags and dumping them all on the table together with a smug sense of satisfaction in time to watch the football.
Thanks to his unprivileged childhood, since joining our family Mr B has been thoroughly spoilt. Everyone likes an underdog. And an underdog you can lavish presents on? Even better! He loves presents, and he loves stuff. All stuff. I could walk into pretty much any high street store and spend £15 (or even more easily £115) on a present for him. The problem is, I’ve excelled myself this month already. Aside from the solo shopping extravaganza mentioned above, I pulled off two major surprise presents for Mr B’s 30th. And although in the making of these presents no money changed hands, (if I do say so myself) they were both pretty fucking special. At the very least they were definitely more thoughtful than cash in a card. Cash in a card. Not listed on the previous predictable presents list, because although this is considered a gift by unthinking family members all over the world, we don’t deem it an acceptable reward for our work colleagues. We prefer something that requires a little more effort and thought for them. Unless you have an excuse, like being old or very very generous, cash in a card is a cop out. But I have a confession to make: I’m all shopped out. Not only am I all shopped out, but I’m all out of ideas. As the sole member of my shopping team, I had to come up with all the genius present ideas this year, and now my brain hurts. And I figure this way we can spend a day together doing all the fun shopping things we didn’t get to do before Christmas, without the pressure of having to remember who owns which dvds, which people require special cards, or more sellotape. So although I am giving him cash in a card – the most unimaginative gift ever invented – I’m doing it for all the best reasons. He gets to spend cash on whatever he likes (when everything is half the price it was before Christmas), and spend the day with me. Lucky bastard!
To Mr B, the loveliest husband on the planet: all I want for Christmas is you.


