Christmas day is a lovely, rosy time in Castle Daymaker. The front room a-buzz with heartroasting telly and the smell of burning apple logs. The cats, Duke and Gonzo, bound around the house with a sense of Yulutainment. Do they know it's Christmas? Yes they do! They adorn their heads with party hats, tell funny jokes and pass the port around as if it was confetti.
The only sour taste of this joyous season is that stack on the landing. That n'er-do-well pile of, well, things. Useless, wierd and inappropriate things bought for you by a relative who sees you once a year and talks to you about motorways. The relative who hasn't really got a clue who you are.
This season's selection.
1. A Parsnip Smeeter.
Horribly angular kitchen appliance of no obvious merit
2. A "Teach yourself Microsoft Frontpage Encyclopedia".
32 volumes, as big as all the major works of religion put together, 3 years out of date.
3. A Plastic Resemblance of a Knee.
Fuck knows who, fuck knows why.
4. A "Moment of the Inferior" fuzzy toy gorrilla.
This series of dolls captures the look on real apes faces at the moment they lose a stare out competition with an award winning movie star. I got the Tom Hanks one. Bloody Auntie Macabu!
5. A copy of "1000 Vegetarian Recipies" on audio cassette read by Philip Franks. I feel a bit guilty about this as I know Mr. Franks now spends over 18 hours a day in prison conditions recording most of the written word of Western civilisation to tape. Nice to have a piece though, even if I'm not a veggie.
6. Dibobolo. Synapse-defying oddball board game involving hexagonal plastic counters and "flame cards".
― Lynskey (Lynskey), Monday, 30 December 2002 15:24 (twenty-two years ago)
You bastard! You have plastic resemblance of a knee? You KNEW I needed one of those!!!! I'll give you £1.99 for it.
BTW, have 1969 bottom, slightly fleshy, some hair, only one zit, £45 ono. Unwanted 'gift'. Voted 8/10 by 19-yr-old girls in St Mary's College. First to see will buy.
― Pooster (pooster), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 01:41 (twenty-two years ago)
Here at Waitrose Tenements our relations are less opulent, their unwanted gifts more modest. A selection of Christmas Day highlights:
(1) A used Kleenex. Substance allegedly mucus, source allegedly one of the Nolan Sisters. Shall make no comment until I can afford to send it to the labs. Meanwhile it is staying firmly outside the house.
(2) A sachet of eczema flakes. Apparently they taste like coconut and add a peculiar frisson to one’s bedtime mug of Horlicks’n’absinthe.
(3) A 1951 tram ticket from Stockton-on-Tees. Return half unused – possible refund due.
(4) A glove-puppet of Myra Hindley. Donor’s motive unknown.
(5) The Batsford Dictionary of Pete Andrews’s Liver Diseases (remaindered, 50p o.n.o.). One glimpse was enough, and I am definitely not looking at the colour plates!
(6) A tattooed arm, recently amputated. I can’t quite read the name on the label but it’s something like ‘Marc Korrin’. Any guesses?
― Rex (using his other email address) (Bollard), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 13:22 (twenty-two years ago)
The arm is cursed. The arm was key in Corrin's campaign of Excessive Blipverts. The arm made the verts appear on telly. It got ripped off in a waterfall fight with a detective some years back. What little of the arm remains should do you well for food and/or shelter as I can see from your enclosed photograph that you need little of either.
― Lynskey (Lynskey), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 14:04 (twenty-two years ago)
Apparently Paul McCartny gave his dear wife Heather Mills a new prosthetic leg for Christmas, not as a main gift of course, more of a stocking filla.
― Robin (RJM), Saturday, 4 January 2003 21:42 (twenty-two years ago)
Way to kill a thread, Robin. Bloody tumbleweed.
― Matt (Matt), Thursday, 9 January 2003 09:34 (twenty-two years ago)
Remote controlled fake tumbleweed for those awkward situations.
― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 9 January 2003 14:54 (twenty-two years ago)
Can one purchase one roller skate? Would a belated gift be inappropriate?
― Zen Clown (Zen Clown), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 05:35 (twenty-two years ago)