What do you get the person who has everything? If you live in jersey and are reading this in december, the answer will need to include mega-premium next day delivery and a prayer to the fickle god of gst imports.
Needless to say, try and buy it locally first. If you don’t want to be doing next year’s christmas shopping in a high street that only has bookies and coffee shops you are obliged to splurge inside the island. Since hmv shuffled off this mortal coil this might be impractical if you want to buy nan the human centipede box set without jogging up queen’s road in your lunch hour, but at least the charity shops can be relied on to stock john grisham novels and steven seagal dvds at very competitive prices.
Even if we did have a healthier high street, presents have always been a challenge in jersey because we are an island of compulsive spenders. The money tied up in our store card accounts, furniture loans and car repayments outstrips the greek national debt, so your main challenge in treating somebody is getting there before they manically treat themselves after one too many espressos. Like inspector gadget i intend to stay one step ahead of my loved ones at all times, so gathered the following tips from candace massengil, vip personal shopper and executive concierge at dubai’s exclusive shif’ti shif’ti private banking service.
What to get … precious little youngsters
It goes without saying that your child will be a social pariah if they don’t return to the playground in january with at least a thousand dead prostitutes to their name in grand theft auto v, the latest blockbuster smash from the people who brought you the video game hits syrian war criminal, downtown strangler 3 and the sims: basement hostage edition. I assume you’ve already got them ps4s and xbox ones, so if you want to make the other parents jealous, your youngest child will be the talk of the pta with their real life, genetically-engineered teacup peppa piglet. These loyal, surprisingly aggressive mutants are available from a “doctor” in bangkok who won’t tell you his postal address. They are tiny, adorable, and can be used to grow a replacement pancreas or about three very expensive hot dogs.
What to get … hard to please tweens
Older boys will be thrilled with the bugatti cameron, a carbon-fibre road scooter with a £300,000 price tag and wheels made from crushed up iphone 5s taken from poorer children’s christmas stockings. Each scooter comes with unlimited legal cover for you to bully anybody who scratches the paintwork when your child runs them over. Girls who’ve outgrown their barbie styling heads will fall head over heels in love with the lil’ miss percoset yummy mummy beauty therapy centre, which comes with scalpels, botulinum toxin and a licence to practice issued by a university in ukraine that you can’t locate on the internet. When (and if) mummy wakes up, she’ll be as beautiful as the day daddy first told hr to hire her over a better-qualified older candidate!
What to get … your university flyaway
Time away from the island in your early 20s is the perfect opportunity to spread your wings, travel the world and earnestly pretend that your parents don’t own a granite farmhouse with its own stables and uniformed maids. Why not engage the services of instant karma life makeover, who will guarantee that your child arrives in gatwick with a brand new identity. Perhaps the ‘krishna juggler’ – battered acoustic guitar, compendium of anecdotes about indian railways and clip on dreadlocks with bits of coloured glass in them? Maybe your offspring is more the ‘pete docherty brown sugar’ and will bloom into a grave-like pallor with mockney elocution lessons and a flat in camden shared with emaciated supermodels and a pile of greasy trilbies. Don’t worry tarquin, your secrets (and trust fund) are safe with us!
What to get … the executive bossman
Only the best will do for the workaholic corporate overseer of your home, and you’ll need to find something he hasn’t already invested in as a vehicle to avoid the tax on some ethically questionable stock options. We recommend the porsche cayenne shopping trolley: modelled on the 6-litre scourge of small roads everywhere, this gleaming chrome beast comes with twin bluetooth headsets and has the ability to block an entire aisle in marks & spencer. It has super powerful infra-red sensors that positively encourage you to crush a cyclist in the car park.
If dad can’t go to the supermarket in case he gets kidnapped by russian gas officials, you could also get him a yacht with a smaller yacht with a boat inside, a moon-rock nanofibre squash racquet or some aftershave made from the tears of an extinct rhino.
What to get … work secret santa
At this time of year hr will be sending out email reminders not to buy secret santa gifts at the “erotic gift shop”, which can make it tough to strike the right balance of tawdry, annoying and useless, that characterises the secret santa ritual. We say avoid a disciplinary hearing and get them something work-related, which in jersey means a home document management system, a massive lawyer leather briefcase or an executive toy to count down the billable hours whilst your office junior does some photocopying. Why not pick up a copy of guess who?: Know your client edition, in which the childhood classic is spiced up with a heavy dose of regulatory compliance. “Is he a disgraced conservative mp? No. The frontman for some congolese diamond merchants? No. Fleeing siberia with a snowmobile full of roubles and faberge eggs? You guessed it!”
What to get … the older generation
Christmas gets harder every year for jersey’s retired generation, frustrated by the inexplicable good timing that lead them to purchase property in the 70s, earning both a gigantic wodge of cash and the right to sermonise about how today’s young people need to work harder. That’s right granddad, we’ll work harder to build a time machine, travel back to a post-war economic boom and stop your generation from greasing the housing ladder with your poor planning decisions and buy-to-let property bubble. Thanks for not doing anything about climate change whilst you had the chance, i hope you enjoy being in a nursing home built on an old emeraude ferry and staffed by terminators.
As our retired parents appear to spend most of their time posting bitter comments on newspaper websites or playing golf, i suggest sneaking into their bedrooms at night and hooking them up to a hyper-realistic virtual reality simulation from total brainwash incorporated. Unaware that reality is an illusion (is reality), they must aim to get a hole in one whilst avoiding the music of skrillex, “political correctness” and miley cyrus’s gyrating buttocks. The only way to make these modern horrors disappear and return to a reality spent watching the grand prix in salmon chinos is to defeat a boss (high blood pressure), who triggers an affidavit signing over your entire property portfolio to your children. Merry christmas everybody!
