Mister Bump UK

Meaningful

This is my response to this week’s Flashback Track Friday prompt, where they asked us to:

Tell us about the best present you ever gave.

I’ve kinda done the rounds with presents. For her fortieth birthday, I gave Mrs Bump some diamond earrings. They were set in gold, elegant, and she still wears them today. I was lucky at the time, I was earning well and was up in London every day, so I was able to get across to a particular area reputed for gemstones, where I not only found a good selection, but avoided High Street rip-offs.

Those were certainly the most valuable, just in terms of money. But at the end of the day, they’re just chunks of metal.

A lot more meaningful was a Christmas gift I bought for my daughter. Just a cuddly crocodile I picked up, by chance, while Christmas shopping in Hamleys in London. With it being a crocodile (we inventively called it Croc) we were able to play all sorts of games which usually involved it eating one of her limbs. Very Peter Pan!

We had that one for years, but I haven’t seen it since she left home. Perhaps she took it with her? Perhaps she still has it? Perhaps the memories are as fond for her as they are for me? I doubt that, but I don’t know.

Nowadays, I tend to go for small things, really just tokens to show that I care. I like giving poetry, it’s nice, I think, to spend creative time and energy on someone. I think it’s all too easy to give meaningless presents like money, and poetry does at least mean you thought about the person some. Besides, people these days already have too much, what use is buying them more junk on top of all the junk they already have?

My friend had her birthday earlier this year. I knew the day, but not that it was her fiftieth, until she told me, so it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Because it was a milestone, her husband had whisked her away for the weekend. I wrote a limerick for her. Like them all, I hope it raised a tiny smile and I hunted the message out today. Most of all, I hope it reminded her not to eat too much 🤣.

For her fiftieth birthday vacation,
She was treated to great celebration.
Had a massive sponge cake,
Which then gave bellyache,
And at bedtime caused huge complication!

Another friend has their fortieth coming up, I’ll spend a bit more time crafting that one.

21 comments

  1. We were Christmas shopping in Staines with the children’s list and our young daughter’s list consisted of small rubbishy things. In Gamley’s toy shop we saw a doll in a yellow track suit sitting high up on a shelf, we also saw another adult approaching as we pondered whether to choose it. We grabbed the doll. When she was unwrapped on Christmas Day our daughter fell in love with her instantly and called her Sarah. She still has her and she is carted around by her little boys. But looking at old photos of when Sarah was a young doll with flowing auburn hair she has not weathered the past thirty odd years well!

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  5. So much of it is your perspective. When we were little, we lived in Pittsburgh and grew up on cement so to speak.
    With a family of 7 children holidays were stressful for parents .One year my sister and I had a little tea set and we would go into the basement and have our tea parties with cake. To us, that was the most marvelous Christmas but my
    mother said it was one of the poorest we had. So child’s view/ adults knowledge. Today we do not give presents to each
    other. I asked bro if he needed something, he said just give me a card and tell me how wonderful I am.. lol.. I said you expect me to lie on a Christmas card? But as you get older you realize it’s having people who love you and who you love that is the gift. The only thing I can say is to me my siblings were the best gift ever and made Christmas what it should
    be, ( most times) 🙂

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    • Thatt’s a wonderful sentiment. I must admit, for me, I will mix with good people. Whether they happen to be related or not doesn’r really come into it. The poor ones I drop, again family or not.

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