Also, what's wrong with olive oil as a present? The new Netflix film that will make you SOB (unless there's something wrong with you). And does Dennis really need a mince pie?
I think the most "naff" thing about the two recent debutante balls you mention Sophia is the low number of attendees - 20 in Paris, 21 at Queen Charlotte's. Really? Seriously? In the 1958 ball, according to the sweet video you posted, there were 1,400! Now that's a BALL!
Agreed, my thought too. That’s a terribly crap party to get all dressed up for -in my imagination they’re just rattling about in an enormous ballroom, which I’d’ve been quite miffed about, actually, if I’d been invited.
Kevin Kwan should definitely consider Count Leo Cosima Henckel von Donnersmarck when he is next looking for names of actual people to pilfer.
Also Dennis is very lucky that he gets to savage a Jelly Cat fox. That is a very high quality brand to use as a dog toy. My dog is jealous. She is given children’s cast offs with no eyes and cast offs from charity shops to rip apart.
OMG he should. Notable silence on that front despite my agent getting in touch with their side. Rude!
And I don't think it is a Jelly Cat actually. I feel like it came from my mum's garden centre! And a friend texted me about charity shop toys yesterday which is a GREAT shout.
Bang on with every point! Firstly, I love, love, love good olive oil as a gift, almost as much as someone offering to pay the mortgage … though oil is more costly, so there’s that. As for gift guides etc., they’re a bit of a trigger for me – I think it’s really deceptive that the recommender has made away like a bandit with all kinds of free junk, while recommending it be paid in full to everyone else. Buyer beware, indeed.
Love everything you write about! 🫶🏻 I also sobbed at Joy. I saw the pics on Insa of Apple but didn’t know what it was. 🙈🤣 I tent to romanticise debs balls because I did love the Mitford books but they probably aren’t relevant to modern daily life. 🤔
I feel you on the presents! I realise (as a married but child free person), that I’m spending £300+ on 7 children this year and I’d (selfishly) rather have gotten myself an F&M hamper. 😬 Children get soooo many presents these days that they’d hardly remember so I’m definitely cutting down next year and just getting them all a book or something. 🤣🙄 I’ve cut down on holiday stress over the years by saying I won’t receive presents nor give them to “grown ups” in an effort to be more minimalistic myself (because most of us buy what we want in the year) and to me, the magic of Christmas is gathering and the food and wine. Otherwise, it can all be a very stressful and unnecessarily expensive time. In the past, I had multiple families of 4+ people to buy for as a single person and it all adds up even if you only spend £10-30 per person. 😅
It's so difficult and I end up always getting such shopping fatigue I will almost buy anything (*almost*) just to get it all done, so am always way over budget.
Over budget is always a problem! 🙈 Hopefully the children you buy for appreciate it all and love what you get. I have a feeling they’ll be more into Dennis, though, than any present. 🤣🤣🤷🏻♀️
Our wretched godchildren get cheques, of a reasonable nature, but usually fail to cash them or thank us for several months afterwards. I fully blame the parents, although the children in question are now 17 and 18 so they could manage to put pen to paper - or fingers to keypad, even - and as we are childless only children ourselves I am frankly startled at the lack of expectations from the parents …. We send cheques precisely so we can see when they get cashed. Sure
y even the under 20s havea cheque deposit facility on their banking apps?
Eek that would be a nightmare re cheques! They have so much that they don’t even bother cashing it and buying something! How curious! 🤔 I also expect handwritten thank you cards because I always sent them as a child and as a 20 something but yes, I rarely even get a thank you these days either. 🙈🙄
It’s very perplexing. Also neither of them address the envelope themselves; it’s done by the parents. My God, at 51 I bet I can still rattle off the address and postcode of grandparents, all Godparents and another couple of family members who regularly sent presents as I wrote two thankyous per year every year for presumably about twenty years, envelopes as soon as my writing was legible. Christmas thankyous on Boxing day, NYE an absolute last possible deadline, birthdays I think perhaps a week? No 1. Godson however is extremely prompt and his inheritance will certainly reflect this! I mean, why not?
I've written this before, but an old Tatler friend used to be made to write her thank you letter for each present as SOON as she'd opened it. And she wasn't allowed to open another present until the thank you letter was done. It makes me laugh EVERY time I think of it. Agony for everyone involved.
Cor, that’s hardcore. My cousins were allowed to open one present each per hour, and as they had seven? eight? aunts and uncles, not to mention everyone else, present opening often continued to Boxing day.
I love that approach re inheritance. 🤣😅 You can write him a thank you note to let him know so the others will know why. 🙃🤪 I still know the old addresses and phone numbers by heart too. I still send thank you cards and the odd letter as it’s always nice to receive something in the post that isn’t junk. 😆
Thank you for always lifting my mood when I read your weekly post & I agree that you would need to be made of stone not to have wept when watching JOY.💔
The thanks should go to YOU for making us laugh out loud and smile wryly every week for FREE! Please don’t hide yourself behind a paywall- I know you all need to be paid but we all need to laugh and there’s little enough opportunity to do that at the moment!
So thank you hugely and keep at it.
Let’s hope 2025 is a better year all round though I fear that’s unlikely so we’ll need you even more!
Happy to receive all comestibles as presents, oil included. Fresh eggs are splendid and I am always sad when my friend L’s hens are a bit off their lay and we go home empty handed. I take those Bahlsen pseudo Jaffa Cake biscuits and/or the Loaker round ones (Waitrose and good Sainsbury’s) with strict instructions not to share as they’re too good, or white wine or Champagne UNchilled, so the host knows it’s for them later and not for whipping out at the party.
Young Apple looks like a loo-paper dolly thingy, which is sweet. Agree with Elaine who has Mitford and Georgette Heyer-ish images of Deb balls which sound a bit rackety but potentially fun. 40 people sounds like disappointment to me.
Dennis will enjoy a tin of pilchards in tomato sauce and being allowed to eat most of the wrapping paper as much as anything else. My old Lab loved to lie on the bed when we opened stockings and chomp hysterically at tissue paper. I used to put a Bonio into a loo roll tube and wrap that in white tissue (coloured tissue often stains indelibly when wet). One in each stocking so he got something to unwrap as well. Once we (I) let him eat the fancy box from the Champagne. My, we certainly had festive poops on the lawn that year.
PILCHARDS IN TOMATO SAUCE. Imagine if you gave such a present to a human being 😂. But I reckon he would totally love that so thank you. In fact thank you for ALL the above it's really made me laugh. Noted on the champagne box front. I think I might try and avoid a festive trip to the vet. Although even saying that is fatal...
There’s a flaw in Liz Wyse’s advice. Couldn’t wine also be construed as a criticism of what has been provided? If people are that touchy, would you want to dine with them? I wouldn’t. I love this blog and I too blubbed throughout Joy. I owe my two beautiful twin grandsons to the work those wonderful people did. We are celebrating their birthday today.
Yes exactly. Also her quote about taking wine which the host may want to open that night is also wrong (I think) because at really proper dinner parties whoever's throwing it would have got enough of the same bottle in for the whole night. Silly silly silly, I think. And HAPPY belated birthday to your two magical grandsons!
Thank you. The boys had a great time and they will be getting whoopee cushions to go with their colouring books for Christmas. Thank you for such a great idea. Nothing funnier that flatulence to a small boy.
What a perfect response to a request for a present costing £100. A whoopee cushion. Well done.
Do journalists get to keep those gifts they photograph for the gift guides? I always wondered why they were all so expensive. How about this £200 face cream for your mother in law? Ha. Mine once gave me massive (twice the length of my size 9 feet) hand knitted socks in itchy wool with the comment « these are for you because I knew you had such big feet ». Another year she wrapped up individually 10 different packs of cheap teabags which I had to find a response for every time my turn for unwrapping came round.
In many cases yes they do keep them! The products are sent in to be photographed for whatever magazine/newspaper and the PR won't necessarily expect them back. A sort of tit for tat thing - you can have this face cream if you stick it in the mag. It's a bit of a racket imho...
Although if it makes you feel any better, as the person who wrote the "things to take to a friend's house for dinner if you don't want to take wine" gift guide for the Tel, only one of those items was sent to me by a PR. And that was a bottle of olive oil from Waitrose, since I won't make a taste recommendation based on a picture of a tin or bottle, I do actually insist on tasting it. Some of the other oils I had tried by going to an olive oil tasting. Everything else in there I have either bought myself or someone has bought for me or it was one of my cousin's recommendations as she's amazing at presents. And I would have put a grab-bag of Minstrels in there but when you write a picture-led gift guide I think people expect you to come up with something a bit different.
I think the most "naff" thing about the two recent debutante balls you mention Sophia is the low number of attendees - 20 in Paris, 21 at Queen Charlotte's. Really? Seriously? In the 1958 ball, according to the sweet video you posted, there were 1,400! Now that's a BALL!
Isn't it good? BLESS Lady Cynthia Colville.
Agreed, my thought too. That’s a terribly crap party to get all dressed up for -in my imagination they’re just rattling about in an enormous ballroom, which I’d’ve been quite miffed about, actually, if I’d been invited.
Hope it’s ok to post this link here: Apple and her cavalier at the ball from Elle España. It does NOT look like a swellegant elegant party at all.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2467324596938197
Thank you! The whole thing gives me a full body cringe.
Yes, really gruesome. The travails of being rich & famous.
"tony's chocolonely" is the best DP gift, you will forget the rest when you have tried it...........
Kevin Kwan should definitely consider Count Leo Cosima Henckel von Donnersmarck when he is next looking for names of actual people to pilfer.
Also Dennis is very lucky that he gets to savage a Jelly Cat fox. That is a very high quality brand to use as a dog toy. My dog is jealous. She is given children’s cast offs with no eyes and cast offs from charity shops to rip apart.
OMG he should. Notable silence on that front despite my agent getting in touch with their side. Rude!
And I don't think it is a Jelly Cat actually. I feel like it came from my mum's garden centre! And a friend texted me about charity shop toys yesterday which is a GREAT shout.
Bang on with every point! Firstly, I love, love, love good olive oil as a gift, almost as much as someone offering to pay the mortgage … though oil is more costly, so there’s that. As for gift guides etc., they’re a bit of a trigger for me – I think it’s really deceptive that the recommender has made away like a bandit with all kinds of free junk, while recommending it be paid in full to everyone else. Buyer beware, indeed.
Amen. I think Debrett's is being SO silly
Pure delight! Just the read for early December!
Love everything you write about! 🫶🏻 I also sobbed at Joy. I saw the pics on Insa of Apple but didn’t know what it was. 🙈🤣 I tent to romanticise debs balls because I did love the Mitford books but they probably aren’t relevant to modern daily life. 🤔
No exactly, I think the old clips of them are wonderful but what on earth is Chris Martin doing waltzing round a corporate hotel ballroom now?!
🤣
I feel you on the presents! I realise (as a married but child free person), that I’m spending £300+ on 7 children this year and I’d (selfishly) rather have gotten myself an F&M hamper. 😬 Children get soooo many presents these days that they’d hardly remember so I’m definitely cutting down next year and just getting them all a book or something. 🤣🙄 I’ve cut down on holiday stress over the years by saying I won’t receive presents nor give them to “grown ups” in an effort to be more minimalistic myself (because most of us buy what we want in the year) and to me, the magic of Christmas is gathering and the food and wine. Otherwise, it can all be a very stressful and unnecessarily expensive time. In the past, I had multiple families of 4+ people to buy for as a single person and it all adds up even if you only spend £10-30 per person. 😅
It's so difficult and I end up always getting such shopping fatigue I will almost buy anything (*almost*) just to get it all done, so am always way over budget.
Over budget is always a problem! 🙈 Hopefully the children you buy for appreciate it all and love what you get. I have a feeling they’ll be more into Dennis, though, than any present. 🤣🤣🤷🏻♀️
Our wretched godchildren get cheques, of a reasonable nature, but usually fail to cash them or thank us for several months afterwards. I fully blame the parents, although the children in question are now 17 and 18 so they could manage to put pen to paper - or fingers to keypad, even - and as we are childless only children ourselves I am frankly startled at the lack of expectations from the parents …. We send cheques precisely so we can see when they get cashed. Sure
y even the under 20s havea cheque deposit facility on their banking apps?
Eek that would be a nightmare re cheques! They have so much that they don’t even bother cashing it and buying something! How curious! 🤔 I also expect handwritten thank you cards because I always sent them as a child and as a 20 something but yes, I rarely even get a thank you these days either. 🙈🙄
It’s very perplexing. Also neither of them address the envelope themselves; it’s done by the parents. My God, at 51 I bet I can still rattle off the address and postcode of grandparents, all Godparents and another couple of family members who regularly sent presents as I wrote two thankyous per year every year for presumably about twenty years, envelopes as soon as my writing was legible. Christmas thankyous on Boxing day, NYE an absolute last possible deadline, birthdays I think perhaps a week? No 1. Godson however is extremely prompt and his inheritance will certainly reflect this! I mean, why not?
I've written this before, but an old Tatler friend used to be made to write her thank you letter for each present as SOON as she'd opened it. And she wasn't allowed to open another present until the thank you letter was done. It makes me laugh EVERY time I think of it. Agony for everyone involved.
Cor, that’s hardcore. My cousins were allowed to open one present each per hour, and as they had seven? eight? aunts and uncles, not to mention everyone else, present opening often continued to Boxing day.
I guess that is good manners to the extreme! Poor friend! I bet she hates writing thank you cards now. 🤣🙈🤔
I love that approach re inheritance. 🤣😅 You can write him a thank you note to let him know so the others will know why. 🙃🤪 I still know the old addresses and phone numbers by heart too. I still send thank you cards and the odd letter as it’s always nice to receive something in the post that isn’t junk. 😆
And then there’s the whole minefield of whether it’s ‘gift’ or ‘present’………
Well yes I feel quite strongly about this, but saying 'present guide' feels a bit affected?!
Thank you! This has spurred me to writing again. I love your posts. xx
Oh GOOD, thank you X
Thank you for always lifting my mood when I read your weekly post & I agree that you would need to be made of stone not to have wept when watching JOY.💔
Hurrah so glad and RIGHT? Just wonderful.
Your newsletters are such a joy!
Thank you!
The thanks should go to YOU for making us laugh out loud and smile wryly every week for FREE! Please don’t hide yourself behind a paywall- I know you all need to be paid but we all need to laugh and there’s little enough opportunity to do that at the moment!
So thank you hugely and keep at it.
Let’s hope 2025 is a better year all round though I fear that’s unlikely so we’ll need you even more!
Def want to keep it free so fingers crossed. And we shall see on the 2025 front. I'm v into being upbeat and positive atm so you never know?!
Happy to receive all comestibles as presents, oil included. Fresh eggs are splendid and I am always sad when my friend L’s hens are a bit off their lay and we go home empty handed. I take those Bahlsen pseudo Jaffa Cake biscuits and/or the Loaker round ones (Waitrose and good Sainsbury’s) with strict instructions not to share as they’re too good, or white wine or Champagne UNchilled, so the host knows it’s for them later and not for whipping out at the party.
Young Apple looks like a loo-paper dolly thingy, which is sweet. Agree with Elaine who has Mitford and Georgette Heyer-ish images of Deb balls which sound a bit rackety but potentially fun. 40 people sounds like disappointment to me.
Dennis will enjoy a tin of pilchards in tomato sauce and being allowed to eat most of the wrapping paper as much as anything else. My old Lab loved to lie on the bed when we opened stockings and chomp hysterically at tissue paper. I used to put a Bonio into a loo roll tube and wrap that in white tissue (coloured tissue often stains indelibly when wet). One in each stocking so he got something to unwrap as well. Once we (I) let him eat the fancy box from the Champagne. My, we certainly had festive poops on the lawn that year.
PILCHARDS IN TOMATO SAUCE. Imagine if you gave such a present to a human being 😂. But I reckon he would totally love that so thank you. In fact thank you for ALL the above it's really made me laugh. Noted on the champagne box front. I think I might try and avoid a festive trip to the vet. Although even saying that is fatal...
There’s a flaw in Liz Wyse’s advice. Couldn’t wine also be construed as a criticism of what has been provided? If people are that touchy, would you want to dine with them? I wouldn’t. I love this blog and I too blubbed throughout Joy. I owe my two beautiful twin grandsons to the work those wonderful people did. We are celebrating their birthday today.
Yes exactly. Also her quote about taking wine which the host may want to open that night is also wrong (I think) because at really proper dinner parties whoever's throwing it would have got enough of the same bottle in for the whole night. Silly silly silly, I think. And HAPPY belated birthday to your two magical grandsons!
Thank you. The boys had a great time and they will be getting whoopee cushions to go with their colouring books for Christmas. Thank you for such a great idea. Nothing funnier that flatulence to a small boy.
I came to learn what naff means but stayed for invidious.
What a perfect response to a request for a present costing £100. A whoopee cushion. Well done.
Do journalists get to keep those gifts they photograph for the gift guides? I always wondered why they were all so expensive. How about this £200 face cream for your mother in law? Ha. Mine once gave me massive (twice the length of my size 9 feet) hand knitted socks in itchy wool with the comment « these are for you because I knew you had such big feet ». Another year she wrapped up individually 10 different packs of cheap teabags which I had to find a response for every time my turn for unwrapping came round.
Oh and HA to your mother-in-law. Maybe a whoopee cushion from you would have been the perfect response then, too?!
In many cases yes they do keep them! The products are sent in to be photographed for whatever magazine/newspaper and the PR won't necessarily expect them back. A sort of tit for tat thing - you can have this face cream if you stick it in the mag. It's a bit of a racket imho...
That’s awful!
Although if it makes you feel any better, as the person who wrote the "things to take to a friend's house for dinner if you don't want to take wine" gift guide for the Tel, only one of those items was sent to me by a PR. And that was a bottle of olive oil from Waitrose, since I won't make a taste recommendation based on a picture of a tin or bottle, I do actually insist on tasting it. Some of the other oils I had tried by going to an olive oil tasting. Everything else in there I have either bought myself or someone has bought for me or it was one of my cousin's recommendations as she's amazing at presents. And I would have put a grab-bag of Minstrels in there but when you write a picture-led gift guide I think people expect you to come up with something a bit different.
Well I think you are entirely justified then.
Oh your MIL did make me laugh
FWIW, I wrote lots of gift guides for work and received none of the items.