I am getting a duffel coat for Christmas.
Or maybe it's a duffle coat – I still can't decide on the spelling. Anyway, it's caramel-coloured with buffalo-horn toggles and a hood that buttons so tightly across the throat that when I pretend to be Jack Hawkins in The Cruel Sea I'm going to find swallowing my cocoa very difficult.
I know all this because it was me who bought the coat, paid for it and stayed in between the hours of 8am and 5pm so the parcel guy could redeliver it for the third time. It was me who then stashed it in the spare room where it'll probably be me who wraps it.
It'll definitely be me who opens it a few hours later – about four, probably: the kids tend to wake early on Christmas morning – at which point I'll go "Wow! A duffel or duffle coat! And are those buffalo-horn toggles? Let me see if the hood buttons across without choking me -"
I might get some socks, too.
There are one or two present ideas doing the rounds that I won't be happy to find in my stocking, however. Top of the list is anything to do with shaving and top of that list is Bacon Shaving Cream. Yes, it's real. And if the makers' claim is to be believed – it's "the highest-quality meat-scented shaving cream on the market today" apparently – then there are other types out there too.
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