A heartfelt plea....

....to all friends and relatives who buy us boxes of chocolates for Christmas.

*feeble whimper* Please don't!

You can buy us boxes of posh biscuits, because I am not really a biscuit person ~ n.b., this excludes M&S All Butter Viennese Selection, which are not so much biscuits as little pieces of heaven in a mouthful ~ you know when you see that phrase 'all butter' that you're in trouble, don't you? 

There are still SOME LEFT in the biscuit tin.  I swear that having to resist them is sending my blood pressure over the top, and I've got one of those 'well woman' (stupid name) health checks next week, at which some kindly nurse practitioner lady will inform me that I need to lose weight, my BP is teetering, I shouldn't still be smoking and I really need to think about coming off these pain killers.  I will then say "I'm sure ten fags a week can't do much harm, if I come off the painkillers I won't be able to walk, and anyway, I've got better skin for my age than you, so there".   (Reminds me of the time 20 years ago when a doctor told my boyfriend that he was overweight, and he said "well, you've got a big nose".)

Actually, I'm going to refuse to be weighed.  They can't make me.  Surely they can just look at me and make an educated guess?  Which brings me back to the point of this post - THE CHOCOLATES.

This year we received a big two layer box of M&S Belgian chocolates, a family sized tub (why aren't they tins anymore?) of Heroes, and two enormous boxes of Thorntons.  The 'Fairground Favourites' are the best.  OMG, as they say.  There's this one in a yellow and green wrapper, it's an apple cream, oh my goodness....

On Christmas Day I told myself "you can eat as many of them as you like, today, but only today".  Of course, this instruction soon slithered gluttonously downwards into you can eat as many as you can.  I had a tummy ache when I went to bed, and I had merely scratched the surface.  A couple of days later a friend emailed me to say that she was stuffing all the Christmas cake so that it would be gone and she wouldn't have to eat it anymore, or words to that effect.  I so understand this.  This morning, instead of the muesli I would normally eat, I ate all the remaining fudges and caramels (the only ones I can't resist) out of the Heroes, so they'd be GONE.  So I won't have to think about or try to resist them ANYMORE.  They probably contained as many calories as the muesli, and I'll be hungry again by ten o'clock.

But the Thorntons problem remains.... I've tried putting little dishes of them on my husband's bedside shelf so that he will eat them all, but, being a man, he just has one or two per evening.  Last year, I found some Christmas chocolates left in his place-into-which-I-cannot-go, in September.  

So this is my heartfelt plea: I'm honestly not being ungrateful, but please, please, next year, if you must give us chocolates, put a gift tag on them saying that they are just for my husband (he is very possessive of his belongings; I will not mention his star sign), or, better still, give us some of these....

...so that I can go to one of these (and I am so bloody old this year that I can almost remember when it was like this!)

...and buy the bubble bath that is absent from all toiletries gift sets these days ~ as moaned about HERE!

In the meantime, I shall just have to rely on willpower.  
That will work, won't it?  Don't all jeer at once....  I WILL drop a dress size by spring, I will, I will.....

Happy New Year!

 

How many did you get this year? Come on, you know what I mean...

.... I'm talking about THESE things!

I've been getting at least three a year since they first appeared in gift toiletries sets in around 1995, and until last year I just left them on the side of the bath until I got fed up with seeing them around April, and chucked them out.  Or pushed them into the bit in the airing cupboard between the linen baskets and the wall and hoped they'd go away.

But they multiply. 

If you have an impromptu clear out of the bathroom at any time of the year, I guarantee you will find up to five of them.  They lurk.

This year I received two, a rather meagre white one in a Baylis and Harding set, and an abundant, lush pink one that's currently still sitting on the coffee table with a self-satisfied, well fed look about him, next to his Soap and Glory friends.  Probably been at the Thorntons.  The ones I haven't eaten, anyway.  Boy, did I have heartburn when I tried to go to sleep last night.  

(update: when taking more bottles of 'body wash' out of their gift packs to put away, just now, I discovered a third one hiding away between the bottles!)

Last year I finally discovered what they're for, by putting one in the bath, adding soap and applying it to my skin.  They're to make your skin go all red, and then fairly smooth.  Kinda like body lotion does, except body lotion misses out the red bit and smells nicer.  I'll stick with the body lotion, I think.  And make a plea to the people who make bath sets to please, please, put bubble bath back into them! 

Bring back the bubble bath!!!

Yesterday, I got shower gel, (result!  I don't have to buy any for either of us until at least November; it actually didn't run out until about three weeks ago, this year!), the oddly named 'body wash' (it's, like, shower gel), body lotion, and moisturisers with practically every name you can think of - hand cream, foot cream, knee and elbow cream (okay, I made that up), and a very thick one like Pond's Cold Cream which has a name too stupid to repeat.  Not as ludicrous as last year's 'body polish', though.  But no bubble bath.  Perhaps they think we're too busy buffing our skin with the strange objects, polishing ourselves all over and applying different creams to each part of the body, to lie back in bubbles.  

I hope you had lots of nice presents!!  I decided yesterday that I would eat what I wanted, with the result that I ate as many chocolates as I could (not as many as I wanted, but as many as I could - there's a difference); today I will instruct Him Indoors to hide them.  He doesn't actually need to - I can't stand the sight of them today.  

Have a good Boxing Day, whatever you are doing!

So what did you get for Christmas, then?

As per my earlier post about the difficulty of buying Christmas presents (HERE) I finally managed to think of things to get for my family and in-laws ~ my father was very pleased with his cashmere scarf, even though I went to about six shops that only sold them in blue, red, garish stripes or ... grey.  Sorry, Daddy, I did try to find one in Dad-ish green or brown but, alas, the store buyers decided that no-one should like those colours this year!

My favourite present was a fab rock chick bracelet from my sister: 

For the discerning Aerosmith lover!  Here's the website if you'd like to have a look for yourself: Twin Rocker Gems.

I also loved my black leather gloves from one of my sisters in law, and my bathroom now smells of strawberries, courtesy of some Body Shop stuff from the other one!  In fact, the strawberries are vying for pole smell position with the L'heure Bleue I got from my father ...

... at least, he said "What do you want for Christmas?" and I said "I'm running low on perfume", so he said, "how much is it, I'll put the money in your bank account,"  and then I ordered it from Amazon, so it's more or less from him, anyway!

Talking of things that smell nice, my husband now has enough shower gel, stuff that you spray on all over, after shave and post shave balm, etc, to last him until about 2017.  He's still using some of the stuff he got last Christmas.  Still, at least it saves buying anything of that type, like, ever again.  I've got shower gel and body lotion and curious preparations called 'body butter' and 'body polish' (???), too, yet no bubble bath.  Don't any of these gift packs include nice bubbles to lie in, anymore?  Do the makers think we're all too busy to lie in the bath?  I've also got lots of those netty type scrunched up things that come with every bath product gift set.  What are you supposed to do with them?  I always leave them hanging about in the bathroom for a few months until they inch themselves into that place in the airing cupboard from which nothing ever reappears.  

Oh, and whatever happened to bath cubes?  Remember them?  Blocks of solid stuff smelling of lavender that never properly dissolved, so you'd find little lumps of them in the bath when you pulled the plug out.  (One of Dad's socks filled with tangerines, nuts and bath cubes.  Nostalge, nostalge).

I won't mention all the chocolates.  The Thorntons, the Lindt, the Heroes...  I'm trying to pretend they're not there (not very successfully, it has to be said). 

I wonder if anyone can beat this present for novelty?  My sister's chap, who is called John Morgan, got a wonderful present (or set of them) from his brother.  John Morgan being a very usual sort of name, his brother, Richard, took it upon himself to find every book and CD he could find by other John Morgans.  Here is John with some of his presents - I like 'The Killer's Manual'!

 Best of all, his brother discovered a 1970s type gents' outfitter, and obtained a Harris Tweed jacket, 'made especially for John Morgan'.  I love this, what a brilliant idea!!

Anyway, I hope you all had a wonderful time with your loved ones.  Now, I must go and take a bath.  I shall be having approximately four per day from now until April, in an effort to get through all that shower gel.  That's if I can fight my way past the boxes of chocolates.....

Saturation Point

Next year, I'm just going to buy them all myrrh.  If it's good enough for Jesus, right?.

Yes, IT has arrived yet again, though I have been trying to ignore it.  I refuse to even think about it until December 1st, but today it's December 3rd.  This morning I did it, I forced myself to look down the Morrissons' aisle I usually avoid - you know, the one with selection boxes and all things red and glittery - in search of packets of Christmas cards that satisfy the happy medium between not-too-ghastly and not-too-expensive.  Talking of supermarkets, I'd prefer not to have to do food shopping at 9.30 in the morning to a backdrop of a juvenile Michael Jackson shrieking 'Santa Claus is coming to town' in two shops running, but there you go - and I whinged about that this time last year, HERE, so I won't do so again...

The saturation point to which I refer in the title of this post is that of present buying and receiving. The 'not thinking about it until December 1st' is mostly because I'm all out of ideas, you see.  Look, my sister is 57 and my brother is 50 ~ over the years we've known each other I've bought them both everything I can possibly think of for birthdays and Christmas, and I'm totally STUCK.  

What do you get the sister and brother with everything?

As for my parents - well, Mum is in a care home; Alzheimer's means that she doesn't know if it's Christmas Day, Palm Sunday or the 4th of July, so that's okay, but Dad?  He's 85.  A couple of years ago he said that he reckons he's got enough clothes to last him until he shuffles off this mortal coil. He's got shelves and shelves and piles of books, and has quite a busy life (his social life is more active than mine) so doesn't have that much time to read.  I've already given him DVDs of everything John Thaw has ever been in, he doesn't need any pictures or ornaments or kitchen equipment.  So what else is there?

Daddy in his long-lasting clothes (on his 85th birthday)

My husband is as bad - he has a wardrobe full of clothes I've bought him over the past five years, and apart from that, what he likes best is things with wires and cables and switches and flashing lights, none of which I understand, so it's best he buys them for himself.  He listens to audio books rather than reads, and downloads any that interest him.  In short, anything he wants he will buy anyway.  I'm the same - I can't really think of anything I'd like, aside from a cottage in Cornwall, mega-visibility for my books on Amazon, a night in a four poster with Josh Holloway (Sawyer in 'Lost') and to be ten years younger. If I want perfume, I go and buy it.  Ditto clothes.  I have sufficient jewellery. Don't even mention books.  I have enough unread ones to last me until my eyes fail.

Josh Holloway ~ all I want for Christmas

Last night I had a brainwave - I suggested to Husband that we don't buy each other anything this year. His relief and delight were such that if we weren't already married I think he might have proposed.  He reckons I'm the ideal woman because I do not require sparkly pink things with hearts on and over priced red roses every February 14th; saying 'you needn't get me anything for Christmas' and meaning it has confirmed this view!

Father and my niece, Freya - at 13, so easy to buy for!

Right - that's the annual festive moan over!  It doesn't help that most of my in-law family are Scorpio and Sagittarius so I've only just had to think of stuff for their birthdays.  Christmas wise, so far I have bought: Lindt chocolates for my husband's nieces.  Cadbury's Heroes for his nephews. Posh hair glitter and a gift token for my own 13 year old niece.  See, the teenagers are easy. Give it another 30 years, though, and I'll be just as stuck. Except that by then I'll probably be away with the fairies in a care home, too....

Mum and Dad sitting outside Mum's care home this summer.  It's very nice there, with a black cat who sleeps on the beds, and chickens in the garden!

You can't go wrong with a box of Lindt Chocolates!