Shut Up Ed: "I don't know how to act when accepting gifts. If a gift is crappy, I still feel like I have to pretend that I like it. Everyone has this problem at least once in their life. My real problem is when a gift isn't crappy I still don't know how to act. I don't want to kiss anyone's ass, no matter what they give me."

My advice would be to say thankyou in an even tone, that says: "I am please that I matter that much to you"; and then place the gift to one side with the others. I go so far as to have a few well wrapped boxes so that the first gift giver doesn't feel bad.

I often say that I'll open all these tomorrow when I can "appreciate them all properly". This gets me out of being thankfull for sixteen pairs of socks and a funny tie.

I hate too much fuss but I do like a little so I tend to arange my own "parties". These often consist of gathering at a randomly selected bup somewhere in the UK (London if I can, kent otherwise) and haveing some bevvies with those mates I truely like.

This has the advantage of side-stepping the embarissing bits, and is turned about as most people will just default to getting you a pint and do not feel obliged to get me well presented socks.

furthermore, I get to set the tone of the event and to some extent this provides a social power. This power is that I get to pick who has made the grade and is now elivated to the dizzy hights of true friend and who has fallen from grace.

This all sounds fairly power hungry but in actual fact it is not as well defined as that. However, birthdays are about me in a good way these days. Haveing taken tham back under my control and being a little pro-active I feel I get a lot more out of them.

Of course, haveing a massive "blow-out" some years is good too!

¶ 5:50 pm