You may miss what you've never had and have what you don't need...

With it coming round to the birthday season again, I begin strengthening my resolve, in preparation for the inevitable, “what do you want…” question.

For me, birthdays have long since ceased to be the magical piss up they used to be.
I simply can’t be arsed trailing round the pubs and clubs dodging binge drunk teenagers and feuding tart filled taxi ranks.
Getting wellied is fine but it normally results my brain and body taking the piss out of each other for about four days.
Eventually, when the hangover subsides, I can’t look at alcohol for about two weeks.
Staying in usually results in the four family members gravitating to separate corners of the house and going for a meal has to involve someone else otherwise there’s nothing to talk about.

So all of this got me thinking about the whole present and birthday scenario.

Why do we give presents – is it as token of goodwill, love and friendship; is it out of a sense of duty or is it because it’s expected of us?

As you get older the whole thing changes focus so many times that you’re never sure where you are.
You swing through extremes of expectation and dread.
Giving and receiving take on different guises and inevitably, the mask slips once or twice.
There are clearly defined eras.


As a kid it’s easy.
Your parents suss you out and very seldom do they get it wrong.
You always get what you want.

As a teenager it’s still easy.
By then you have defined interests and these can be fuelled endlessly with all sorts of accessories, gift tokens or cash.
Parties are totally off radar and fashion disasters can be avoided by persuading dad to part with a wad of tenners.
Despite being blessed with all the adolescent charm of Atilla the Hun, you can still be dragged out of your grunting stupor by something that makes you feel like an adult especially if it’s from your mates mum.

When you hit your twenties things get a bit more tricky.
Your parents are less likely to have the same understanding of you.
You’ve moved out, become a partial stranger and you’re more likely to be loved up.
They will probably give you something completely embarrassing but the whole present game takes a different swing when your partner comes in to bat.
This is the purple patch where everything you get, no matter how crap it is, will be the best present ever and exactly what you wanted.

By the time you hit your thirties, you probably have your own home, car and have kids of your own. Your partner will use them as an excuse to buy all sorts of weird shit that you don’t want just to make up for all the good stuff they got you in your twenties.
Your parents will present you will all manner of practical things.
Car washing stuff.
Gardening stuff.
Kitchen stuff.
DIY stuff.
All of this will centre on the things they would like to encourage you to do.
Generally, these are their hobbies and are the things that you hate which is why you don't do them.

Once in your forties, you instantly turn into gadget man.
Everything from useful gadgets like cameras, mobile phones and iPods to utterly f4cking hopeless crap like electric toothbrushes that play a ‘We Will Rock You’, Crème Brulee burning torches without the required gas canister and shower radios that, if you're like me and dislike DJs and want to blitz through the whole bathroom experience ans quickly as possible, are a complete waste of technology.

When you hit your fifties, your parents are generally getting a bit senile, so you start getting lots crazy, irrelevant stuff.
Golfing brollies when you don’t play golf.
Wine club membership when you’ve been teetotal for 20 years.
Aftershave when you’ve had a beard for thirty years.
You will also get some sort of garment that one of them likes so much that they buy it for you three years in succession. You’re only spared a fourth by the fact that the person in Bangladesh who makes said garment is now old enough to escape their exploitive employer and has moved to Delhi to get a real job in a call centre.
Your kids will be young adults themselves by now and they will take delight in wreaking revenge for the embarrassing present you gave them last year.
They might even take advantage of the fact they think you’re senile and give it back to you.

By the time you reach sixty, you cease to step through the magical wardrobe of life into a magical Narnia like world of mystery.
You have stepped over the threshold into the realm of hopelessness.
Everything has an air of predictability. You are officially old and therefore impossible to buy a present for.
You have everything.
When you consider all the things you actually wanted in life you have either bought them yourself or they are the non-material gains that come from simply living.
Your kids will get all nostalgic for when you were younger and they will try to recreate your younger days by giving you balloon trips, windsurfing courses or scuba diving lessons. You will, quite naturally, accept with customary good grace and pretend it’s just what you always wanted but in reality you’re crapping it over whether or not they will have a wetsuit big enough to encapsulate your vast rotundity. You know full well that next year it's going to be a week of caving in South America and begin to start preparations in advance by going on a cocoa leaf and aguardiente diet.

If you are lucky enough to reach your seventies the whole thing takes on a new air of wonder and expectation.
You wonder if you’re going to make to the next one and your kids give you something with a short sell by date in the expectation that you won’t.
After that, who knows?
If you’re not dribbling into a bib while someone changes your incontinence pants then you’re so lucky you don’t need a birthday present.
Running through all of this though is one general rule - Girls are easy to please
Nice perfume - yes
Nice lingerie - YES
Out for a romantic meal and maybe a movie, wearing the nice perfume and lingerie – absof4ckinglutely.
Guys? We are a nightmare.
When asked, we can’t come up with any suggestions for what we would like.
That whole pragmatic, unromantic sense of perspective gets in the way.
We think of all things that we don't have that we would really like and all the things that we already have but didn't want in the first place. I'm sure if honesty prevails, the balance is with the things we didn't want.

Last year, I offered no clues so my wife bought me a shirt.
Admittedly it was a killer shirt and cost her about 70 quid but it was still a shirt. I can’t be one of those guys whose partner or even worse, whose secretary, buys their clothes.
No one buys me clothes except me. It’s too risky.

Still, it did prove that she clearly has a tap into my mind and obviously knows me better than I’d like to admit.

Maybe that's a good thing.
This year I’m saying absolutely nothing…
...and so to this weeks music.

Big Country - Keep On Trucking
http://rapidshare.com/files/143300263/Keep_On_Trucking.rar

The Alarm - In The Poppy Fields
http://rapidshare.com/files/143205113/In_The_Poppy_Fields.rar

Nick Cave - Live In Brazil 1989
http://rapidshare.com/files/143339550/Live_In_Brazil_1989_1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/143211937/Live_In_Brazil_1989_2.rar

Leonard Cohen - Dublin, 13.06.2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/143234971/Dublin__13.06.2008_1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/143226638/Dublin__13.06.2008.rar

The Felice Brothers - Tonight At The Arizona
http://rapidshare.com/files/143241537/The_Felice_Brothers_-_Tonight_At_The_Arizona.rar

Matthew_Sweet - Kimi Ga Suki Raifu
http://rapidshare.com/files/143246797/Matthew_Sweet_-_Kimi_Ga_Suki_Raifu__2004_.rar

Uncle Tupelo - UT- 94
http://rapidshare.com/files/143253560/UT-94.rar

The Gaslight Anthem - The 59 Sound
http://rapidshare.com/files/143257767/The_59_Sound.rar

Warren Zevon - Sentimental Hygiene
http://rapidshare.com/files/143260862/Warren_Zevon-Sentimental_Hygiene-1987.rar

Warren Zevon - Moore Theater
http://rapidshare.com/files/143217340/Moore_Theater.rar

Ben Harper and The Blind Boys Of Alabama - There Will Be a Light
http://rapidshare.com/files/137738363/There_Will_Be_a_Light.rar

Tom Waits - The Rat Cellar - Live in Dublin
http://rapidshare.com/files/143280579/The_Rat_Cellar_1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/143288127/The_Rat_Cellar_2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/143267260/The_Rat_Cellar_3.rar

...one of the best albums of the year so far...
The Scheme - Sunset On A Daydream
http://rapidshare.com/files/143291629/Sunset_On_A_Daydream.rar

Enjoy.

Hooli