The nights are drawing in, the Christmas decorations have long since been up in Birmingham city centre, and it’s getting to that traumatic time of year when I have to think about buying presents. Babel was inconsiderate enough to be born a fortnight before Christmas, which means that the run-up to December is very fraught indeed as I try to think of not one, but two acceptable presents

I am not very good at buying presents in general, and buying presents for Babel is particularly problematic. You can’t buy him music, because he doesn’t listen to it. You can’t buy him DVDs, because he downloads anything he wants to watch. You can’t buy him books, because unless you agree a specific book with him in advance, the chances are he’ll have bought it, read it and reviewed it before you get to give it to him. You can’t buy him clothes, because he’s not a clothes sort of person and he has an abnormally large neck. You can’t buy him aftershave, because he wouldn’t use it, and you can’t buy him chocolate because it wouldn’t help his figure. So out of all my usual male-present-buying ideas, the only one that remains is socks and since we disagree in any case over what constitutes an appropriate sock, I feel this is territory best avoided (more…)