Christmas, 2012

Ah, Christmas...

Every year, my family tell me they don't know WHAT they're going to get me, and every year we have a great big laugh about it. But every year I think ah, THIS is the year. This is the year when they DO know what to get me, but they're all PRETENDING they don't. They're all conspiring with each other, pooling their money and resources, going that extra mile to get me the thing that will make me happy, whatever it may be. It's all a surprise, I think to myself. It's all a wonderful surprise and on Christmas Day when I've handed them their really really expensive gifts and I'm standing to one side while they ooh and ahh and laugh and hug, they're suddenly going to turn around and say Derek, surprise! We have what you've always wanted!

And then they show me a parcel beneath the tree and I fall to my knees, and with trembling hands I slowly tear the paper and lo... the most perfect present ever in the history of the world. And I am happy.

This year my mother got me a dart board.

She got me a dart board because, obviously, she knows how much I secretly love darts. She has cleverly read between the lines during each of our many conversations throughout the year- conversations in which darts have not been mentioned one single time- and she figured out that what I really wanted for Christmas, the thing that will finally make my life complete, is a great big dart board.

Mother, I think it is safe to say you have excelled yourself this year. Well done.

My brother and sisters, meanwhile, all got together and arranged an aircraft simulation lesson- where you sit in a cockpit thingy and take off and land a plane without actually, you know, being IN a plane. Well, they ALMOST did that. What they ACTUALLY did was hand me a piece of paper with all this written down. They got me a SUGGESTION for Christmas.

Now, to you, this mightn't sound that bad. You might be thinking hey, they didn't know if Derek would be interested in this, so they suggested it, and if he seemed agreeable, they'd go off and book it. And this, dear Minion, would a reasonable thing for you to think.

Unless you remember a few years ago where my sisters told me that what they were going to do for me that Christmas was renovate my bathroom. Oh wow, said I. A bathroom renovation, just what I've always wanted. A bathroom renovation as done by two pregnant women with no prior history of bathroom renovations, nor indeed any relevant knowledge of said undertaking. I just couldn't get any luckier.

And if you remember that, you may also remember that they never actually got around to doing it.

And you may also remember that last year, in some feeble attempt to make up for it, they got me a bath mat and towel. For Christmas. Between the two of them.

It wasn't all terrible disappointment and quiet tears when no one was looking, because today was also the day of Doctor Who and The Snowmen!

I'm not entirely sure who the villain was or what the logic was, and I thought Richard E Grant could have been used SO much better, but it was fast and funny and Matt Smith is great and Jenna Louise Coleman is... is...

Jenna Louise Coleman is just so PRETTY.

I know, I know, I have a history with Amy Pond. We were close. We were even in love, for a while. But times change. People change. They move on. I've moved on. I love Amy, I do, and she will always have a special place in my heart...

But Jenna Louise Coleman is just so PRETTY.

I... I think I love Jenna Louise Coleman. I think THAT is what I got for Christmas.

God (or whatever random deity you might acknowledge) bless us, every one.