Christmas at the Quinn's: Part 3
As a rule, the ceremony of 'present giving' is one of my favourite parts of Christmas Day. My wife and I exchange - what I call - Santa presents in the morning and then with the wider family after Christmas dinner. I love to give gifts, I’m like the Child from that John Lewis advert - I think of thoughtful presents and really look forward to seeing people’s faces on Christmas Day. This year however I think we crossed the line where it no longer is a pleasure but rather a bit of a pain.
I think there comes a point in everyone’s life where they need children at Christmas, and our parents are definitely ready to be Grandparents! I mean, as a rule, my Christmas shopping has always been fairly straightforward. If you can’t get it from Amazon, Ticket Master or TK Max then you don’t need it. But this year I found myself contemplating each item for its usefulness before I bought it, and don’t even got me started on the amount of money my wife spent on a chocolate corkscrew... all I’ll say is, I could've had a good bottle of Chateau, a real corkscrew, a wine glass and a bar of chocolate and still had change, but I’m not being a grinch about it, I love to give gifts - as long as they're useful!
The added pressure now though, as you get older, is when people ask what you want: I mean what you really want is a brand new car and holiday to the Caribbean - but that’s a bit out of budget. Trouble is, the things in budget that you want are the things you could buy yourself like socks and jumpers (not chocolate corkscrews)!
So this year when asked the dreaded 'what do you want for Christmas?' I decided to ask for something I’ve always wanted but thought was a little indulgent - a meat grinder/sausage maker! It’s not as random as it sounds... I am a classically trained chef and up until 3 years ago, creating food was my life, but now after hanging up my chef's hat, food is more of a hobby. My summer BBQ’s are pretty legendary and as I’ve perfected my homemade burgers I’d like to give homemade sausages a try. At least that’s what I told my wife when she said, I’m not getting you one of those, we’ve enough kitchen gadgets as it is - why don’t you get something practical like a spiralizer? So I put it to the back of my mind.
Fast forward to 4 days before Christmas and I’m sat in the office having a bit of a moan that was something along the lines of - my wife asked me again last night what I want for Christmas and whether I think I may have gone up a jean size as she hadn’t gotten me anything yet and was going late night shopping afterwork - I was mid rant when an Amazon delivery driver walked into the office with a parcel. It wasn’t in an amazon box, it was just in its normal box... Well you could of knocked me down with a feather! It was only a bloody meat grinder and sausage maker! The ever-thoughtful wife probably forgot to change the delivery address from last time she had something delivered to my office and here I was slagging her off to anyone who would listen and in actual fact she’d gone above and beyond. This was a far superior meat grinder and sausage maker than I would of hoped for! She must've really spent some money on this! Then I suddenly felt terrible for her... this was her Christmas surprise to me, ruined and she’d done such a good job throwing me off the sent with talk of new jeans and a spiralizer. 'I know' - I said out-loud - I’ll ring my Mum, she'll know what to do. Mum and I work in the same office so I was thinking she could say she saw the driver pull up realised what had happened and managed to intercept it before I saw it. The joy of Christmas giving would be saved! As I was frantically trying to explain all this to my mum she went very quiet and with a slight quiver in her voice said “I asked amazon to gift wrap that in case you where in the office when it was delivered.” Well if you could of knocked me down with a feather when the meat grinder and sausage maker was delivered, you could of used said feather to dig me a hole the size of the Grand Canyon and then watch me try and climb my way back out of it. If there’s one thing worse than taking away the joy of Christmas giving, it's taking away the joy of a parents' Christmas giving to their child - even if that child is 32 and the gift is a little obscure!
Christmas Day came around though and I think we all managed to see the funny side. I made a big deal of unwrapping it, trying to guess what it might be. Mum did, however, manage to surprise me with an added extra, sausage skins! So guess what we’re having for tea for the foreseeable? Homemade sausages and spiralized veg!
I think there comes a point in everyone’s life where they need children at Christmas, and our parents are definitely ready to be Grandparents! I mean, as a rule, my Christmas shopping has always been fairly straightforward. If you can’t get it from Amazon, Ticket Master or TK Max then you don’t need it. But this year I found myself contemplating each item for its usefulness before I bought it, and don’t even got me started on the amount of money my wife spent on a chocolate corkscrew... all I’ll say is, I could've had a good bottle of Chateau, a real corkscrew, a wine glass and a bar of chocolate and still had change, but I’m not being a grinch about it, I love to give gifts - as long as they're useful!
The added pressure now though, as you get older, is when people ask what you want: I mean what you really want is a brand new car and holiday to the Caribbean - but that’s a bit out of budget. Trouble is, the things in budget that you want are the things you could buy yourself like socks and jumpers (not chocolate corkscrews)!
So this year when asked the dreaded 'what do you want for Christmas?' I decided to ask for something I’ve always wanted but thought was a little indulgent - a meat grinder/sausage maker! It’s not as random as it sounds... I am a classically trained chef and up until 3 years ago, creating food was my life, but now after hanging up my chef's hat, food is more of a hobby. My summer BBQ’s are pretty legendary and as I’ve perfected my homemade burgers I’d like to give homemade sausages a try. At least that’s what I told my wife when she said, I’m not getting you one of those, we’ve enough kitchen gadgets as it is - why don’t you get something practical like a spiralizer? So I put it to the back of my mind. Fast forward to 4 days before Christmas and I’m sat in the office having a bit of a moan that was something along the lines of - my wife asked me again last night what I want for Christmas and whether I think I may have gone up a jean size as she hadn’t gotten me anything yet and was going late night shopping afterwork - I was mid rant when an Amazon delivery driver walked into the office with a parcel. It wasn’t in an amazon box, it was just in its normal box... Well you could of knocked me down with a feather! It was only a bloody meat grinder and sausage maker! The ever-thoughtful wife probably forgot to change the delivery address from last time she had something delivered to my office and here I was slagging her off to anyone who would listen and in actual fact she’d gone above and beyond. This was a far superior meat grinder and sausage maker than I would of hoped for! She must've really spent some money on this! Then I suddenly felt terrible for her... this was her Christmas surprise to me, ruined and she’d done such a good job throwing me off the sent with talk of new jeans and a spiralizer. 'I know' - I said out-loud - I’ll ring my Mum, she'll know what to do. Mum and I work in the same office so I was thinking she could say she saw the driver pull up realised what had happened and managed to intercept it before I saw it. The joy of Christmas giving would be saved! As I was frantically trying to explain all this to my mum she went very quiet and with a slight quiver in her voice said “I asked amazon to gift wrap that in case you where in the office when it was delivered.” Well if you could of knocked me down with a feather when the meat grinder and sausage maker was delivered, you could of used said feather to dig me a hole the size of the Grand Canyon and then watch me try and climb my way back out of it. If there’s one thing worse than taking away the joy of Christmas giving, it's taking away the joy of a parents' Christmas giving to their child - even if that child is 32 and the gift is a little obscure!
Christmas Day came around though and I think we all managed to see the funny side. I made a big deal of unwrapping it, trying to guess what it might be. Mum did, however, manage to surprise me with an added extra, sausage skins! So guess what we’re having for tea for the foreseeable? Homemade sausages and spiralized veg!
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