Once upon a time, probably on a Hampstead pavement
over an almond latte and a chicken pesto, a person of the corduroy persuasion
must have experienced a light-bulb moment in which he or she resolved to start
a business of selling useless shit to people at extortionate prices; prices
that are justifiable on account of the fact that the products are personalised,
unavailable anywhere else and presented in a sophisticated glossy catalogue and
modelled by white, blonde, Midwich children and their fleece-clad families.
Without leaving myself open to a law suit (do
we get them in Britain?) and naming any particular company, I would like to
share with you the amusement I am receiving from flicking through one such
catalogue of sickeningly twee over-priced useless shit, where indeed the major
USP is that you can have anything personalised and you won’t find any of it for
sale anywhere else. But that’s unsurprising,
as it is without doubt the most pointless lot of take-the-piss-priced crap you’d
ever foolishly bang out your debit card details for.
To begin my sojourn through this emporium of
excrement, I would like to present to you a pair of personalised Mr and Mrs
cushion covers (£36). Given that every
straight man alive considers the very existence of cushions anathema to logic,
a superfluous lump of discomforting adornment to a perfectly functional sofa, I
can’t see such a present going down too well this Christmas. Should anyone buy a pair for me and Mrs
Bastard, I am likely to fill the covers not with cushion but with dog shit and
post it back to the sender.
For a mere £75 you could purchase a
personalised chopping board. What the
fuck would you choose to write on a chopping board except perhaps “Chopping
Board” (in case some backwards idiot ever mistook it for a giant coaster)?
For £135 you can order a canvas print of… wait
for it… WORDS! Not just any words, but
in fact words that you choose yourself.
The catalogue suggests, rather nicely in a fuck-off-nice sort of way,
that you choose names of all the members of your family and their dates of
birth, which would look NICE in a word-cloud on a grey background. Nice or perhaps crap?
Now, if Dad didn’t like the cushion set, then
let’s buy Dad some beer. Yes, men
like beer. So, for just under a hundred
pounds Dad receives each month for 3 months a whole crate (ie. six bottles) of British
Beers of the Month, with mats and pub quiz so it feels like Dad is down the pub
and not at home with his frighteningly blonde children of the damned. Calculators out folks! That’s £100 divided by 3 times 6 bottles,
which is a fiver a bottle. Twice what
you pay in a supermarket for a bottle of bitter. So those beermats are probably
made of gold then.
You can’t personalise the beers unfortunately,
but you can personalise some cufflinks for Dad.
A different word on each cufflink, along with the dictionary definition
in beautiful Times New Roman font. I
should think they have a lot of demand for the words FUCKING and MUG.
Perhaps the cufflinks will match the
personalised collar stiffeners (£26).
Bits of metal that go inside your collars. Inside.
Out of sight. Where no one can
see that they have your fucking name on.
Hmmm. I’m sure they’d work better stuck down your foreskin, as you’d be
hard-pushed to get it up ever again after the despair you’re likely to suffer
should your wife ever buy you such an item of unadulterated shit.
Sadly, the section of gifts For Her doesn’t
warrant having the piss taken out of it, as it is full of predictably dull
kitchen and jewellery crap, with kids’ names on or twee little slogans about
cooking and wine-drinking. Skipping
therefore to the children’s section, I am expecting to browse my way through
products that are either cute or educational.
Because I’m sure every customer’s child is “very bright and needs to be
challenged.” I was right. Lots of wood, lots of wool and a plethora of
diverse children’s names ranging from Josh and Noah to Katie and Lucy.
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