Category: Responses

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.