What the Dickens is going on at Yuletide?

1:25pm Thursday 20th December 2007

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I COULDN'T understand why at first, but Mrs Mann tells me she has bought me a CD film of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol' as a present this year.

Normally, it's just underpants and socks, so I just couldn't work out why she had purchased as my special gift an adaptation of a piece of work first published in 1843.

And then it dawned on me. The good lady was making a sarcastic joke about my Scrooge-like attitude to the festive season.

She says she's sick and tired of my moaning as we traipse around High Wycombe looking for presents for people. She is sick of me pointing out that my budget for each family member is less than a tenner which means we can't buy the glittering gifts she wants us to purchase.

Furthermore, she is sick of me then pointing out that the recipients will no doubt throw these cut-price goods, or silly novelty books about flatulation, into the nearest skip and it will all be money down the drain.

She positively loathes my sensible suggestion that our entire family should refrain from buying gifts from anyone bar their spouse or children. If we did it that way, Mrs Mann and I could afford to get each other jolly expensive nice things, and still have enough left over to purchase one of those Christmas puds with brandy in it.

Sadly, and this is where I go humbug', no one listens to me, and instead they all indulge in a frenzy of pointless overspending. The only person really to benefit from this madness is the bank manager who has a happy new year working out the rate of overdraft he will charge us.

Anyway, at least I have the perfect excuse to save all my money this year and buy gifts for no one. I'm abstaining on the grounds that I'm saving all my cash up so I can park in Wycombe next year when Mrs Clarke puts up the prices.