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One week until Christmas and still on the hunt for presents? I’ve got some top panic buy ideas this year

As we all suffer from jaw-clenching political anxiety, I reckon I’ve got a couple of unconventional but effective solutions to relieve some much needed tension

Jenny Eclair
Monday 17 December 2018 11:58 GMT
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Most Brits lie to close ones about liking their Christmas gifts

Christmas is coming, thank goodness. I think we all need a break; rancour is so exhausting isn’t it? Mind you Christmas is exhausting too – especially now that they’ve discontinued those handy wristband sticky tape dispensers – but compared to months of Brexit bitching, it’s a breeze.

Whatever. This year I’m embracing it: tree, cheese, port, pressies – not that I need anything. In fact, presents are very low on my list of priorities this year, to be honest, the only thing I really want is my favourite armchair re-covered in some kind of fabulous fabric that will withstand another few years of me sitting around on my big arse watching telly.

I’ve reached that stage in my life when I’m very territorial about “my chair” and woe betide anyone else who attempts to sit in it. The only trouble with the chair is it’s become a sort of extension of my dressing gown. Because I spend half my life in it, it’s heavily stained, so please Santa, something colourful and easy to wipe down would be ideal.

As for what to buy everyone else, well, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve kids, so listen up. Most people I know are a bit fraught at the moment, it’s been a tense time, months of jaw-clenching anxiety and trying not to fight with “the other side” and who knows, the way things are going, 2019 might get even tenser.

What everyone needs this Christmas is something to relieve that tension and I reckon I’ve got a couple of solutions. For starters, beer-making kits are a good idea for those who fancy seeing out the rest of the Brexit negotiations in an alcoholic stupor. You can pick them up online for under £30 and some even come with their own pint glasses, which will make a nice change from sucking the booze out of a Demijohn via a rubber tube. Alternatively you can just buy your loved ones a load of cheap tins of lager from the supermarket. Cheers!

But beer kits aren’t going to be suitable for everyone. For those of your nearest and dearest who have to remain sober but still need something to make them relax, how about a pom-pom maker and some brightly coloured wool? A professional pom-pom making kit costs around a tenner and I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t benefit from this handbag-sized hobby.

Now, obviously you can go old school and fashion your own pom-pom creator out of cardboard, but my new state-of-the-art metal contraption is a life changer. Seriously, this is a sophisticated piece of kit – although I did spend a good weepy hour trying to work out how to use the thing before I managed to get my pom-pom production line going.

However, once I conquered the pom-pomator and got cracking, I tell you, rarely have I felt such satisfaction as seeing a pile of perfect fluffy pom-poms begin to pile up around my feet.

“Yes, but what are you going to do with them?” I hear you scream. Well, so far, I’m making simple festive woollen garlands in day-glow colours, but there’s a world of pom-pom art out there if you dare to look, and once you master the craft you can make pom-pom fruit, birds and animals – basically the world is your pom-pom. Just don’t drink and pom-pom.

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Still not convinced? Okay then, books are always a safe bet, and I’m going to shove the ones I enjoyed the most this year into my rellies’ faces. I’ve narrowed these down to a top three, two of which reflect the vicious climate with uncanny accuracy: the appallingly funny Kill Em All by John Niven and the slyly prescient Middle England, by Jonathan Coe, both of which serve to remind us how and why things go wrong and how far reaching the consequences can be.

The third, After the Party by Cressida Connolly, is a fictional account of the inevitable downfall of a well to do female fascist who deliberately blinkered herself against the truth of Nazi evil. Read – or listen – and learn. Both Niven and Connolly’s books are superbly performed on Audible, by the way.

Finally, the other idea on my “what to give the most difficult members of my family” list, is the squatty potty, LA’s most fashionable accessory and the most effective way to avoid uncomfortable haemorrhoids. The squatty potty is essentially a stool for delivering better stools. Around the 30-quid mark, the squatty potty is a plastic lavatory adaptor which encourages the user to squat rather than sit when evacuating one’s bowels, thus guaranteeing a cleaner, more efficient, more complete movement.

Or, as it says on the box, it “relaxes the puborectalis muscle, allowing the anorectal angle to straighten and thus allowing gravity to do its work”. They’re all the rage. Proctologists swear by them and let’s face it, after the tricky year we’ve had, nothing screams “Christmas 2018” more than squatty potty. Have a good one everyone, if you know what I mean.

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