All Present and Correct

I went out today to buy some presents for yet another round of birthday parties that the kids will be attending in the next few weeks. I once added up how much I spent in a year on birthday presents for other people’s children. It is not an exercise I would recommend. I couldn’t stop myself from equating the cost with the number of cases of champagne that I could have bought instead – I was miserable for days.

Thankfully, my kids have now got to an age where birthdays no longer involve a party for the whole class. This means we now have the occasional weekend where H and I are not on permanent chauffeur duty, and our annual birthday present expenditure has dropped from ‘obscene’ to merely ‘uncomfortable.’

Unfortunately though, the birthday children are no longer at an age where they all want a day-glo pony with a tangled nylon tail, or a double-jointed superhero - regardless of how many they already own.

Despite the obvious practicality, giving money to the 7-10 age group seems to be frowned upon. Maybe there is a suspicion that feckless parents will fritter it all away on booze rather than invest in something ‘educational’ for their little darling – which is not a bad idea when you think about it. The only solution I can think of, that allows the children to choose something they actually want, is vouchers.

Now, I know my sons and their friends would prefer a voucher for the local video game shop, so they can continue to fry their brains with high definition graphics. My daughter and her friends would rather have a voucher for ‘Claire’s Accessories’ so they can deck themselves out with fluffy headbands, bracelets and body glitter. I would rather have Majestic Wine vouchers, for obvious reasons, or failing that, book tokens, but that’s because I am a forty-something mother of three (and I already have enough body glitter).

In the end, I was so fed up trying to decide, that I got several book tokens, and several vouchers from the other shops as well.

I’ve now got my feet up, enjoying the spicy cherry flavour of a glass of Tesco Finest Corbières Reserve (£4.99) and trying to match up each voucher with the appropriate child. It’s a bit like a card game, but with the added complication of having to consider which parents consider video games to be the work of Satan, and which would have their feminist principles offended if their daughter bought some sparkly hairslides.

Thankfully, there are always the book tokens, but I can’t help wondering if the recipients of these will just end up wanting to swap them for cash from their parents, and then blowing the lot on the Pic ‘n’ Mix sweetie section of Woolworth’s.

On that basis, I should have just bought Majestic Wine vouchers all round.