2023 Gots ‘n’ Gaves.

Veteran of 17 family Christmas get-togethers since first becoming a burden on the university system, Alan Blaneford, lecturer in IT, hobby designer of crossword-solving software tools and sometime walking magazine contributor, completes the annual accounting of gifts given and gifts received. It’s another ruse to pass the time during the four days together with the extended family – it feels like many more – of what might be the very last Christmas of this sort, given the condition of both parents. It’s both a rolling evaluation, and a starting point for early thoughts on the subject of gifts for the following year – what can be bought well in advance means less stress later.

Sis#1: Got: complete set of paper maps for walking in the Austrian Alps; Gave: a set of three graded knife-sharpening whetstones. She complains about not having the time to cook at home, that chopping carrots takes too long, therefore the eating out, the ordered takeouts, the weight gain. She has the knives, just needs to get them sharpened, and get cooking again. I have offered to do the sharpening for her if she nips home and fetches the knives. This would also help to kill quite a bit of time, and will look to the other guests as something far less anti-social than hiding behind a full-size newspaper to solve the year’s biggest and hardest crosswords. As for the set of maps, she has failed to notice (but actually why should she, it’s not her natural environment?) that the informational world of ramblers, scramblers, climbers and via ferrata specialists, has moved into a new comfortable zone inside their smartphones. The paper versions of the digital aids are only now there in case of power cuts, terror attacks affecting servers, and hapless individuals who find themselves alone in the mountains with a dead phone battery.

Sis#2: Got: the English translation of a German forester’s work about trees and their very secret lives; Gave: a voucher for the thermal spas at Buxton, for two of course, with her new husband. I must say a great improvement on the first one, she seems with this marriage to have left the world of status anxiety behind, replacing a handsome Arabian? alpha-male surgeon, after a brief pause, with a cheery-ironic, but somewhat shabby, northern Englishman, with a beard even less convincing than my own. Their (his?) gift looks rather interesting, I must say, and this gets the new couple off to a good start in my books. Maybe I should have flown over for the recent wedding after all, why was I not told that hubby#2 was a decent sort? My present for the wedding – a kefir starter kit – was however a good idea and I am led to believe is in current use. I suspect I am therefore in their good books. And sis#2 is in my good books now, leapfrogging sis#1 to reclaim top spot, after an absence of over a decade in second place.

Sis#3: Got: sauna towel, extra wide and long; Gave: A kit for embedding objects of interest in a translucent resin for installation indoors or out. Now I will be able to lie full length in the sauna and not contaminate the wooden slats and therefore also not the other guests, with any of my bodily imperfections, notably: verrucas, eczema, dandruff, athlete’s foot. And sis#3 and husband will now be able to make resin blocks embedded with pictures of the kids, or things the kids have collected on their family jaunts in the woods, or maybe the kids themselves. They idolize their kids, and have in recent years incorporated them into fotocubes, candles, calendars, car steering-wheel covers and a forgettable range of products, all too visible and undesirable for sale or discrete disposal.

Dad: Got: 150 quid, twice. Gave: an elixir gift pack. The cash transfer from his bank account to mine had been upgraded on a number of occasions over the last ten years, and this year, dementia-doubled. It’s anybody’s guess what amount next year will bring: higher multiples of 150? Or nothing at all due to a forgotten banking password? Or my share of the inheritance? My gift should do him the world of good, the various bottles contain many of the things he is apparently low on, like iron. Given what they cost, it would be disappointing if there was no apparent benefit.

Mum: Got: llama wool socks. Gave: wriststrap doorbell alert. The socks fit, and are warm, which my feet often aren’t, so good for you Mum for getting it right, a fine effort for someone struggling for every breath. Not sure the doorbell alert will help her much, as the time between recognition of doorbell jingle, and getting to the door, is more often than not so long that the visitor gives up and goes away.

Mum’s brother William: Got: surprise surprise, a bottle of Irish whisky; Gave: biography of one of England’s finest ever golfers. When each year I open the present and recognize it as a whisky of some quality, I feign some combination of surprise and gratitude, acknowledging the sly wink from Billy. There are so many things I would like to ask him but seasonal decorum prevents me from doing so: like, did he buy a job-lot years ago which he is still working through? were they at some point stolen? does he know this is probably 15 years on the trot the same gift? does he know that I don’t drink given that he has four days every year to notice? But then, this is ‘Billy Bonkers’. The man who congratulated me on being 14 years old, 5 years in a row, until he one day saw the beard and laptop, and settled on a spell at 21 years old. The man who practised his golf driving from the terrace of his small Dublin garden, and paid up immediately – and generously – whenever an exasperated neighbour appeared a short while later. Anyway, he’s got another golf book to read, if he indeed sits still long enough to do so.

2023. As good as in the bag, nobody offended, no ambulance called. And my prepaid taxi to the airport is now only 7 hours, 20 minutes, in the future.