Okay, on the curmudgeonly side, here’s further input from the male perspective concerning what to avoid.
- Just because I have an interest in guitars, I don’t necessarily hanker for jumpers with guitars on, coffee mugs with guitars on, guitar-shaped bookends, a mouse mat with chord shapes, a guitar-shaped cutting board, a dashboard ornament of a little nodding hippy playing guitar or an alarm clock that wakes you up with the opening chords of Stairway to fucking Heaven.
This advice applies not only to gifts for men. In her thirties, an ex of mine foolishly mentioned in company that she rather liked frogs. Thirty birthdays later, in every room in the house, she’s up to her bottom lip in frog-related tat. Someone got her a spare toiletroll holder in the shape of a frog with a fishing rod.
2. ‘Do you like it? I wanted to get you something you’d never get yourself.’
I shall of course accept delightedly. But think about it - I’m sixty and not entirely skint. If I’ve never got it myself, there’s probably a reason for that.
3. ‘Something we could do together’.
Fair enough in principle, but I have noticed that the thing you want us to do together usually involves us staying at a hotel within two hundred yards of something you’re eager to do, and to which I’ve been saying ‘no’ for months.
4. Not all men like whiskey. Or whisky.
5. Do you actually know anyone in real life who wears leather gloves? If so, put them in touch with me because I’m prepared to let go of an extensive collection of unworn leather gloves dating back to the late eighties.
6. Candlesticks are equivalent to a framed poster reading “I care about you a little less than I’d like to admit”.
7. As I have told my kids, anything from Halfords and you’re out of the will.
But, you know, anything’s fine, honestly. It’s the thought, and all that…