Nigella Lawson chose eBay to offload one of her friend Sophi Waugh's books Photo: Clara Molden
I suspect everyone has at some stage handed on an unwanted present. However, a recent incident has shown me the potential dangers of such an innocent action. It all started when a friend told me that she had bought one of my books on eBay, having noticed that it was missing from her collection. When it arrived, much to our amusement, we discovered that it was a copy I had given to Nigella Lawson, an old friend of ours. How did we catch her out? I had inscribed the inside cover of Nigella’s book with a personal message to her.
The odds of all this happening are, of course, infinitesimal, and luckily I laughed merrily, rather than sulking for years, as Paul Theroux did when V S Naipaul auctioned off a book inscribed with a heartfelt message from Theroux. Also, we were luckily aware of Nigella’s huge success, so we hardly had to worry that our friend was down on her uppers and forced into a sale. But the joke does raise the issue of what to do with presents you don’t like or no longer want.
I remember being very shocked on being told that my grandfather, Evelyn, had once remarked: “It’s such a relief when servants die; you can throw away all their presents.” But it is true to say that we all have so many things that there must be a way to dispose of them without hurting people’s feelings. The charity shop is, of course, one sensible option – you’re doing good, as well as clearing shelves – but if you live in as small a town as I do, you can be sure that you will be caught out, so that won’t do at all.
The charity route is certainly not infallible under any circumstances. A cousin decided that her children had been given too many presents for Christmas and so, after making the children write thank-you letters (a gratuitous act of cruelty in the circumstances), she donated half their loot to the Church fête. Any pride she might have felt in her generosity was destroyed at the sight of her little darlings queuing at the stalls with coppers held hotly in their fists and tears running silently down their faces as they tried to buy back their own presents.
Full story at The Telegraph.
Full story at The Telegraph.
