I am sharing my attic with a Puffin. Not a real one I hasten to add before the RSPB send the heavies round but a large carved wooden piece of ethnic art and I swear it is giving me a funny look.

For once it wasn’t him downstairs that bought it as one of he’s antiques of the future. No this is a Christmas present for Tristan and Glenda their trendy neighbours. 

They moved in a year or so ago.  He’s in marketing and she’s a financial consultant.  Not that I’ve got anything against them but they did refer to my tree as ‘wonderfully retro’. Of course their Christmas decorations are straight out of an interior design magazine or so their spirit of Christmas tells me.  Twinkleberry that’s his name, the stuck up sod.  All he has to do is sit there knocking back the Baileys as they’ve jetted off to some exotic location for Christmas.  While I’m handling a situation that makes the middle east look like a palace garden party.

So what’s this got to do with the puffin? You may ask.  Well last year they gave my lot an exotic Etruscan Peace Fern and they gave them a box of Quality Street. Which was very post modern apparently until a toffee pulled out one of Tristan’s fillings out at which point it all became a bit embarrassing. Serves them right if you want my opinion.  The peace fern thing was defective anyway because she threw it at him during the traditional Boxing Day row.

So this year she was determined to get Tristan and Glenda something trendy.  Well as chance would have it they went to Iceland as a birthday treat for him downstairs.  At this point I would like to state out they went to the country not the supermarket, as he thought when she first told him.  They went whale watching, saw the hot springs and apparently had some wonderful views of the Northern Lights.  Though I doubt they’d be that impressed with them if I told them Northern Lights are really a bunch of drunken pixies trying to write rude words on the sky with a glow stick.

So she bought back this piece of ethnic art as a present for Tristan and Glenda and he brought back a souvenir mug from the Penis Museum for his aunty Ethel. Not that he’ll be allowed to give it to her; no she’s getting the Quality Street this year.

But it’s a sign that the time is nearly here for me to descend to the front room and try and bring a little joy and harmony to this house over the Christmas period.  Soon she’ll drag him out to the shops to buy all those important little gifts making sure he keeps the receipt so that she can return them for something more appropriate.   He’ll come back loaded with wrapping paper and enough tape to wrap up an elephant which he’ll promptly forget where he put it and go out and buy even more.