Pussy blip no 4

That's the end of the pussy blips. Have run out of innuendos. Although, let's face it. Any sentence with the word pussy in it is always hilarious, isn't it?

Anyway, today, what I would like to talk to you about is presents. Both the giving of, and receiving of.

Over my long and varied working life I have contributed to many 21st, 30th, 40th, 50th birthday presents. I have contributed to weddings, silver weddings and ruby wedding pressies. I couldn't even count the number of leaving and retirement presents to which I have chipped-in. And there's the new baby pressie too.....*

Bloody hell, I think I have even contributed several times to that gift idiosyncrasy, The Engagemnt Present. (what's that about?)

It's not that I grudge it, but I do think that I've not had an equal return when I have been the birthday/leaver colleague. (It was an especially parsimonious pressie when I left one workplace, a bottle of wine. "hmm, not bad" I hear you say. Except I recognised it as being a bottle that Vicky Wines were doing a 3 for a tenner promotion on. (so presumably my erstwhile colleagues glugged the other two bottles the moment I handed back my security pass at the front door).

Of course the above is just part of my present giving history. There's all the pals over the years too. Birthdays, weddings, new babies *, etc etc

So? If you buy a wedding present and the alliance doesn't even make it to the paper anniversary, do you think that the gifters should get some sort of compensation?

Now obviously I am not so selfish that I would invoice the unhappy couple for the costs incurred for my outfit, taxi, drinks and hairdo. But perhaps a percentage of the money spent on the wedding pressie?

So blippers, do you think it would be acceptable to ask them for £19.50 back? (I have calculated this sum by taking into account how long I would expect the union to have lasted and the length of time it actually lasted. And rounded it up to the nearest 50 pence)

* i wish to point out that I have never bought a christening present. (but I suspect that most of you will not be too surprised by that revelation)

I have a couple of great websites to link to, but I think that I will leave that until tomorrow, if that's ok with yooz? But remind me, or I'll forget.