Fifty Sense

The mighty Marks and Spencer has come to my rescue. Thanks to the divine intervention of St Michael, I will not be forced to wear orthopaedic shoes at the birthday dinner next weekend. Instead, a pair of turquoise strappy wedges (wider fitting) will transform me from dumpy frump into streamlined sylph – blink and you will miss me as I cha-cha-cha past, waving my glass of bubbly aloft. So what if my little toe hangs over the edge of the shoe like a sea-sick sailor? You can’t have everything.
Unfortunately, in my euphoria at scoring a pair of glam shoes, I forgot all about buying a birthday present. What do you get a fifty year old man for his birthday? He doesn’t drink much wine, so the ‘gift which says you truly care’ is not an option. There is a trend for buying ‘adventure days’ which allow the birthday boy to hurl himself around a racing track or parachute out of an aeroplane. But I reckon if you’ve managed to get to fifty without a coronary, it doesn’t seem very wise to tempt fate. A relaxing spa day is out of the question (this is no metrosexual male we’re talking about here), since I think any attempts at massage could result in an unseemly brawl. As for those enormous novelty balloons - I’m not sure what the attraction of a large balloon might be for anyone over the age of eight.
It appears that fifty-year-olds are no longer allowed to shuffle quietly into the realm of the old git, swathed in a baggy, threadbare cardigan, and clutching the crossword. Now they are all completing triathlons, or clambering across several thousand miles of coastline dressed in lightweight gore-tex.
I can remember a time when the term ‘male grooming product’ referred to a pair of nasal hair clippers, and that was it. Apparently today’s fifty-something male has the choice of applying anti-wrinkle cream or a face mask after shaving, rather than just slapping himself around the chops with a handful of Brut. It’s all very confusing.
As I am running through options for presents, I am aware that I am running out of time to buy anything. Slowing me down (thankfully) is this large glass of Bon Cap Syrah (Ocado £7.99).
This South African organic wine is a recommendation from my mate Peter at The Pinotage Club. H is more of a Shiraz fan than I am, but I like the peppery spice and liquorice aftertaste of this one, even if it is rather dry. It has certainly made me determined to try some of the Pinotage that they produce, if I can get hold of any.
As for the 50th birthday present, I’m still at a loss what to get. It’s all very well sashaying along to the dinner in my new shoes and party frock, but I don’t think that clutching a gift-wrapped Old Spice soap-on-a-rope is going to be appropriate, somehow.

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.