Posts tagged christmas

I mentioned taking part in the Reddit secret santa this year in an earlier post, and it’s taken a while but I have some updates on the subject.

Firstly, I received the present intended for me from a very nice gentleman in Canada. He had tried to purchase something inside the UK and have the company amend the postal details so that it would be addressed to me. Unfortunately he was unable to get them to agree to that, and instead sent me a message explaining that in the next few days I’d be receiving a small parcel addressed to an unknown man, and I should ignore that and open it up. Sure enough a few days later the package arrived, and it was a beautiful minichamps model of a 1998 Jordan F1 car, driven by H-H Frenzen. I was amazed, I don’t know how he worked out I was a Jordan fan, I mean the team hasn’t existed for nearly 10 years. Essentially my SS was a genius, and they made me very, very happy.

Secondly the parcel I sent to Japan *finally* arrived! I had begun to worry that customs officers searching for illicit sweets might have ripped it open, but no it was just taking its time getting half way around the world, and understandably so really. The person posted a really nice message about the present on the Reddit Gifts site, and included a shot of his 5 month old daughter wearing the Christmas hat I’d sent. It’s left me smiling from ear to ear and I really am glad that the bits and pieces were received in the way they were intended.

Lastly, the talk of Secret Santas made my Mexican friend Ricardo realise that in all the years we have been talking online, he’d never thought to send me a Christmas card or anything before, so we swapped addresses. I don’t know what I was expecting, I had briefly said that I’d be interested in anything stereotypically Mexican but it rapidly became apparent that postage to the UK is restrictive and expensive. Anyway, last week I came home to find a parcel waiting for me, with a Williams F1 sticker on. Somehow I partially convinced my brain that I must have made a Williams order at some point and completely forgotten, but the more I thought about it the more it didn’t make sense. I opened the packet, and out fell an assortment of Williams F1 clothing, all in my size. I was completely awestruck, I couldn’t work out how I’d ended up with not one piece of clothing, but three, and seemingly out of nowhere. And then I checked the package note and saw the billing name. Mind. Blown. Completely and utterly not what I was expecting, and oddly well timed since we’d been discussing the F1 races we might attend, and I’d been reading about the Williams F1 museum.. (more on this). I’m pretty much speechless, and I need to attend an F1 event to make use of my wonderful clothes, though so far I have worn two of the t-shirts randomly, to the pub and even to pre-Christmas dinner. An amazing gift :-)

So yes, museums! For Christmas Andy has (provisionally) arranged for us to go on a tour of the Lotus F1 factory :-D. It was a toss up between whether to have a guided tour of the Williams museum, which does really look fantastically interesting, or having a look around the actual factory used by Lotus to make and maintain their F1 cars. Difficult choice, but with everything that’s going on behind the scenes at Lotus at the moment, and with them currently being the only F1 team to offer such access to fans, I had to go with them. So it is hopefully booked for January, just before the tours get paused for new car development. It’s going to be amazing, and I am really looking forward to the journey down there, I’ll have to make sure I’ve sorted out some good music to listen to.

I decided to join in with the Reddit Secret Santa this year, and I think it’s really made me feel Christmassy, more so than I thought it would. I spent this morning wandering around town searching for gifts having done some Internet research to find out as much as I could about my giftee, and it just made me feel happy. 

It probably helped that the temperature outside is about -3, there was snow falling around me and I treated myself to a gingerbread latte. Definitely aids the Christmas spirit when the world looks like a Christmas card. I hope the recipient appreciates what I’ve got them, they’re from Japan and I really didn’t know what to get! Also my wrapping skills leave a LOT to be desired. I shall keep my fingers crossed.