Balls

As one gets older the obligation at Christmas to spend a little more money and devote a little more effort on gifts for loved ones grows exponentially. At the age of 11 or 12 the need to buy a thoughtful present for your step-mother is nonexistent, but get to the ripe old age of 21 (by all accounts, a verified adult) and suddenly I’m expected to call my father ahead of time and double-check that he hasn’t already bought her the Keith Richards autobiography. Then again, she did buy me a Kindle for Christmas, so the ball is arguably in my court.

Being a male, I left the last of my shopping until the late afternoon on Christmas Eve. I expected the shops to remain open long into the night given the hordes of men like me who had failed to think of anything appropriate and decided to let department stores make those types of decisions for them. Alas, they closed early.

I am being rather harsh on myself; I did foresee the typical last-minute nature of Christmas shopping, so I hadn’t utterly rammed myself. One thing did frustrate me, however. Thinking of my beloved girlfriend’s father, and wishing to put forward the best possible impression as always, I’d compiled a shortlist, from which I’d later select the best option, of possible gifts that would present your humble blost as thoughtful, sophisticated, intellectual, but also slightly edgy. He readily admits that he rarely has time to read, so the normal route of book-buying was closed off. With that in mind, I’d chosen the following possibilities: a DVD copy of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse or George Sluizer’s The Vanishing, or perhaps Neutral Milk Hotel’s masterpiece, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.

You, learned and educated reader, will sympathize and share in my outrage when you discover that I could find none of the above, anywhere. As Mark Kermode once declared, in “Film School 101” you watch The Vanishing. In the case of Pulse, it’s another film that has lingered in my mind ever since I watched it about a year ago. At the time, it was neither scary nor particularly attention-grabbing, and yet I would now consider it an absolute classic. Lastly, what more needs to be said about Neutral Milk Hotel? Well, their album was recently listed 16th in Q Magazine’s rundown of the best albums of the past 30 years, which, I do not need to confirm, is an outrage (it was placed behind two Oasis albums, two U2 albums, and a Coldplay record).

The shopping megaplexes of High Wycombe and Ealing offered no respite, to the detriment of my prospects with the future in-laws. I hereby broadcast my apologies. And so I’m left with another ball in the court of guilt and embarrassment.