For as much as I love harsh weather (particularly harsh winters that come with plump woolly jumpers, mince pies and cinnamon coffee), walking around Oxford Street under the pouring rain and taking part in the Umbrella Wrestle has its lows. Today however, after a lovely dim-sum-and-martinis lunch with a cool lad from the Amex days, such was our fate. This ended up being a rather unsuccessful shopping trip: we got one gift out of the four we needed, and there is just one weekend to go where we will actually have time to shop any more. Right now, I think it’s fair to say that we are both glad to be home and armed with warm drinks and biscuits.
On the way, I managed to get a few bits and pieces of supplies for my current project – a dogtooth skirt which is coming along quite well and could, if I wasn’t blogging right now, be completed tonight. I recently also completed a party dress which in the end wasn’t what I wanted – not so much because I messed it up (I did no such thing this time), but because the type of dress isn’t quite the right thing for my figure. It will still work rather well for relaxed xmas parties between friends, but won’t be the party dress I needed for the multiple office parties I am due to attend this year.
And from office parties to a rant about a pet peeve… This time of year has come again for the most gut-wrenchingly annoying thing of all: the bloody Secret Santa. I swear, every time I am part of a new organisation (which has been frequent these past few years with me contracting a bit), I have a little bit of hope that it isn’t part of the culture. And every single time, when someone with wild enthusiasm for all things office-party sends round an email to check that “£5-10 is acceptable”, my heart sinks. Don’t get me wrong: it’s nothing to do with the money itself. Thankfully I have now reached this point in my career when 10 quid won’t make a difference to the end of the month. No. It’s the fact that not only do you have to buy a gift for somebody, but on top of this you can’t even choose who you buy it for. And for all the luck that I had this year in landing a job with a team who is essentially made of bright and rather fun people, that is, I’m afraid, not the point.
Perhaps here shines the remnants of my French resistance to the mixing of the work-related and the private. But really, really, few things put me in such a state of dismay than the destruction of the whole joy of offering gifts, which to me is all about showing to somebody you care for, that you care for them, just like that, because you just do. Having to buy a gift for a person picked out of a hat is about as horrid as having to schedule something into your Saturday. It’s plain wrong. And I don’t care if I’m a scrooge.
