UPFRONT: MY BOYFRIEND HAS been dropping hints that perhaps we shouldn't bother buying each other Christmas presents this year. I've been ignoring him in the hope he will eventually get the message that not procuring a present for me would be rather like Gordon Ramsay not getting a Christmas gift for his wife. It's a scenario that would end in tears and possibly blood, none of which would be mine.
I've always been the Christmassy type but pregnancy has turned me into Crimbozilla. I am now the kind of person who has to be restrained from phoning radio shows to complain about the silver monstrosity masquerading as a Christmas tree on O'Connell Street. I get mad longings for sherry trifle and the other night I woke up in a sweat jolted by the burning realisation that the season will not be complete without a visit to the Moving Crib. (This makes a pleasant change from waking up in a sweat pondering "How in the name of Jehovah is it going to come out of there?".) I've never laid eyes on the Moving Crib but lately I'm consumed by the urge to experience this Christmas institution. I toss and turn and worry that maybe it was just a folk memory, that it no longer exists and, if it does, then it's probably evolved into a virtual experience sponsored by Nintendo where you have to wave the controls in a gentle cradling motion to get baby Super Mario Jesus to stop crying.
So while the Person Who Might Not Be Buying Me A Present sleeps the blameless sleep of the non-pregnant, I get up at 3am and Google "Moving Crib" to discover that it very much is still in situ. But lo, as they say in Bethlehem, that is not enough for the mad pregnant woman. The next day I ring the Moving Crib people at St Martin's Apostolate (42 Parnell Square, Dublin 1) where a nice woman calms me down by confirming the crib has been going for
50 years now and is still the best free Christmas show in town. There are 100 figures set in 14 different tableaux. It's like the anti-Christmas-on-Ice apparently. I cannot wait.
(This next bit is slightly off topic but I feel moved to share that I just wrote the last sentence while eating a Swiss cheese, (possibly toxic) sausage, red onion, gherkin and ketchup toasted sandwich. Think of the most delicious meal you've had recently, then triple the taste sensation and that's kind of what it felt like as the sausage mingled with the gherkin and the ketchup teased the slightly-melted cheese.)
But back to the season that's in it. We are going to my sister's house for the festivities. She served duck with a cherry sauce last year, which was beautiful and made a very tasty alternative to turkey. However, this year I can't bear the thought of anything other than a traditional, authentic Christmas. She's taken the hint and ordered a turkey, now I just have to make sure she stays on course for the starter. It has to be a retro prawn cocktail with home-made Marie Rose sauce and crisp iceberg lettuce. And with every course I want pickles. Pregnancy cliché or not, all I want for Christmas are jars and jars of pickles, which I will start consuming by the fistful at 11am on Christmas Day in lieu of several large gin and tonics.
But unfortunately that's not all Crimbozilla wants for Christmas. I thought I'd done enough ignoring of his hints to set my boyfriend straight on this matter. Then one day, like an ant unaware he was about to step into the path of a bulldozer, he came straight out with it: "So, I've been thinking, with the economy and the extension and the pregnancy, that maybe we shouldn't buy each other presents this year, what do you think?" What I think is that a bit of back story is required at this point. Some readers will recall that this is the man who once bought me coat hooks for Christmas. The kind that go for a tenner in a hardware shop, not some designer versions with an abstract art hook you might pick up in the Tate Modern shop.
He could spend the rest of his life buying me excellent presents such as the trip on the Orient Express which followed the coat hooks and he would never redeem himself for that catastrophe. "But you said you needed coat hooks" is his stock defence when the subject comes up at the beginning of December every year.
"Yes," I say. "I need a lot of things. A desk tidy. A newspaper rack. But if either of these things is wrapped up in pretty paper and placed under a tree on December 25th, you may find there's no room at the inn, by which I mean my bed." What's more galling is that instead of no present, I had actually been thinking he was planning to buy me a special present this Christmas. The evidence was indisputable. 1. I saw the brother-in-law slipping him a catalogue from a well-known jewellery store.
2. When I forced him into the (packed) Tiffany concession stand in Brown Thomas, he seemed very taken by a €36,000 diamond necklace. 3. Even though we've shelved our plans to get married before the birth, we do plan to tie the knot some day.
The problem is I've spent our entire relationship telling him I am not that kind of girl. The kind who expects a diamond for this relationship landmark, another one for that baby and yet another one for simply existing. All these years I've successfully marketed myself as a low-maintenance, cheap and cheerful girlfriend. Now I'm window shopping in Boodles, Tiffany and Theo Fennell like a woman possessed.
And yet sadly I am also painfully aware that I'm much more Argos than I will ever be Tiffany. The only jewellery I've ever managed to hold on to for any length of time are the $7 rings made out of cocktail forks he bought me from a stallholder outside the Guggenheim in Manhattan. I love those rings, but I've lost so much jewellery over the years that buying me a diamond is tantamount to throwing it in the nearest skip.
Sure, Crimbozilla may be dreaming of a blinging Christmas but in reality she's anybody's for a bumper jar of pickles and a visit to the Moving Crib.
roisin@irishtimes.com
