Bead Barmy

Handmade jewellery always delights!

The ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and ‘wow, you really made that?’ are all very gratifying. It’s the men that are so difficult. I can see all your heads nodding in agreement as I write!

It’s almost that time of year again and, already, I’m having my own ‘nightmare before Christmas’, wracking my brains for original gift ideas. The girls are easy but the men can cause many a sleepless night.

Rock on

A couple of years ago my brother built himself a bar in his house extension. I’m not talking a Del Boy, circa 1970’s style bar with compulsory soda siphon. I mean an all singing, all dancing room with optics, a wine rack and all. My brother loves his rock music and he loves his bar. Problem solved for a while. You can never have too many ACDC coasters right? The bar is looking a bit full now though, as the whole family went mad on pub paraphernalia, so it’s back to square one with him.

Merry Christmas darling

My other half isn’t too bad to sort out. He usually wears his clothes until they’re practically falling off, so a new supply of shirts and socks are always welcome. It’s not the most exciting gift in the world but nevertheless it’s a safe bet. He even likes the odd bit of jewellery in the form of a bootlace tie!

Oh brother!

My brother-in-law is the most difficult. He loves wine but they live part-time in France, so their house in England has the greatest stock of Beaujolais this side of Calais! He loves the Blues too, but has usually downloaded the lost back catalogue of Old Blind Fred or Wild Willie No Shoes before you’ve even heard of them. Dad always likes a diary, but multiple copies have been known to happen and there are only so many anecdotes you can write about your day to day goings on (apparently)!

Why can’t a man be more like a woman?

Unfortunately, none of my nearest and dearest are really jewellery men either. I honestly can’t see any of them emulating Leonardo Di Caprio in The Beach with a bit of hemp twine and shell or bone around their necks! Actually my brother-in-law did try to sport a ‘man necklace’ once and was greeted with screams of ‘get it off!’ by my sister and her friend. Trust me, they weren’t re-enacting a scene from The Full Monty.

So with all this said, I tend to stick my head in the sand and digress from thinking of gift ideas until the last minute. Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love Christmas. I love baking mince pies just for the festive smell, even though I don’t particularly like the taste. I love decorating the tree with all the old favourite baubles and topping it off with the ‘loo roll’ angel my nephew (now twenty eight) made about twenty years ago. I love having the gang round for a mulled wine evening and foisting the aforementioned mince pies on them. I just wish the men could be a bit more, well, womanly!

A Bone of Contention

Gift vouchers all round!

The Bead Barmy and Beads Unlimited Christmas staff do is usually entertaining too. Last year we had a pub quiz, for which I helped write the questions. We decided to make it Brighton-based with it being our hometown and all. We threw in the odd, random question as well just to pad it out and add to the jollity. I could, however, have skipped the entire quiz bar one teaser to fill the evening with.

The question that proved to be such a bone of contention was ‘Which part of your body can’t you lick?’. The official answer is, apparently, your elbow. However, after a couple of glasses of wine, this sparked plenty of debate. One bright spark piped up with ‘there are loads of parts you can’t lick. What about your eyeballs?’ Contradictory evidence is out there somewhere on YouTube I’m sure! Then, another talented individual disproved the answer altogether by actually licking their elbow. Needless to say, their team won.

Anyway, as I said, I do tend to digress. Oh dear, is that the time already? Gift tokens all round then?