Monday 29 December 2008

...and Christmas presents


Over on a forum somewhere we were exchanging tales of best and worst Christmas presents. Here's my fave for this year, from young K. It's an okapi. I have called her Edna. Edna O'Kapi.

It doesn't take long for me to come up with the Worst Christmas Present Ever. The winner by a mile was a cut-out-and-build book called Kokigami: Performance Enhancing Adornments For The Adventurous Man. It came from someone to whom I am related, though not a blood relation (name withheld, even though she's most unlikely to read this...). I unwrapped it, and I and my then partner gazed in disbelief, before burning it and washing our hands.

It is, of course, all too easy to laugh at the inappropriateness of some presents, going beyond the well-meantness of Betjeman's Christmas:

The sweet and silly Christmas things,

Bath salts and inexpensive scent

And hideous tie so kindly meant
.


. And so, as it is nicely undemanding occupation for the dead time between Christmas and New Year, why not? Over to you. I'm making Edna her breakfast.

Field observations indicate that the okapi's mineral and salt requirements are filled primarily by a sulfurous, slightly salty, reddish clay found near rivers and streams.

4 comments:

  1. Perhaps you should get Edna a salt lick.

    I'm very easy going about presents normally. We always tried to avoid having clothes from mum. I think that she still thinks we're twelve year olds

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  2. What a strange book!

    Charlie

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  3. You got an Okapi?? That rocks. That would top my list, too..

    I have a glow in the dark octopus at home called Colin, that I love to bits.

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