Beware The Hint-Dropping Wife

You have to be careful around this time of year.

Correction:  Men have to be careful!

It is the time when hints and names are dropped; when detours are made to pass that certain boutique or store; when magazines are left inadvertently open at a page featuring a certain product.

It is the time when the man of the house puts himself in serious danger of withdrawal of 'certain privileges', or quite possibly, bodily harm, if any or all of the afore mentioned are ignored.

Now I know that you guys out there have, as I have, the ability to fully function during a conversation with your 'other half', answering any and all questions, maintaining the continuity and flow without, and this is the key point,  actually listening or fully understanding what has been said.

How many times has 'She' come home and started an conversation (argument) with the words "Why haven't you ... " or "Didn't you say that you would ... "?

Take my advice ... for I have suffered in the past and have have been through many a silent Christmas ... take heed of the mutterings of 'She who must be obeyed'!  Turn of that game on TV. Put down that beer. Stop reading that car magazine.

Take up your notebook and pencil and be prepared for at this time of year, she will certainly be casting out bait in a multitude of directions, which you must catch and swallow, in order to get that Christmas gift that she (maybe not you) thinks she deserves.

Tread carefully my friends!

I would hate to have read that you went through one of those dreadful Christmas silences or of you having to have conversations via the kids:  "Ask your mother ... ", "Tell prune-face that ... ", "Ask the old cow if ... "

It's Coming!!!

My head already hurts.

The talk, in the circle I frequent, is already turning towards Christmas.

I haven't recovered from the stress and cost of the last one and already people are pushing the unavoidable prospect of another one under my nose.

I really should speak to my therapist about this!

Shopping expeditions are no longer the strategically designed 'in and out' exercises they once were, as I am now 'ordered' to keep my eyes open for suitable presents - "... but cheap ones, mind you! We don't want people thinking we like them!"

Like the surfer that has just found a ripple that is destined to become the perfect wave, I feel compelled to ride it to shores of  Christmas and beyond.

I just wish Christmas wasn't so commercialised and that we could return to the uncomplicated Christmases of old, where the Christmas spirit started to flow at the end of November and not a moment sooner.

I wish the media would wait until the smell of an on-rushing frost was in the air before peppering us with ad after ad.  

I wish my parents were still around so that they could take charge of the present buying and I could sit back and just relax until the big day.

I wish ...

Bug'rit!

Everyone's getting handkerchiefs again this year.

Now if only I could remember which colours they had?