It's the thought that counts

First: a disclaimer that I'm not complaining about my perfectly nice and thoughtful present. But... I suspect a small snafu in the ordering process.

Back in October when the girls came to visit, I got all over-excited about the mini Jaegermeister bottles I found in the supermarket in Luxembourg and made us all do Jaegerbombs with them. Except I didn't have enough shot glasses for everyone, so a couple of us had to improvise a bit with eggcups, which was harder than it sounds.

This obviously gave Liz a brilliant idea for my Christmas present, because a week or so before Christmas a package turned up from her, courtesy of Amazon (thankfully in time for me to panic-buy her a cute, if slightly undersized makeup bag from Esprit, hand-draw a Christmas card using office stationery and dispatch it to France - I didn't realise we would be exchanging gifts at a distance, bad friend).

Now, normally I would most definitely not google the presents people are nice enough to buy me, but upon opening the parcel I was a bit perplexed to find that this box, about the size of two large shoeboxes, contained a single shot glass. A fancy crystal shot glass, to be sure, but just the one. I fished out the packing slip and saw written on it something along the lines of "Fancy Brand Name 586214/8 verre à shot".

Bemusedly wondering if there had been some mistake and where the other 7 shot glasses had got to, I typed "Fancy Brand Name 586214/8 verre à shot" into Amazon and figured out that the final 8, despite appearances, was just part of the product code and what was for sale was indeed one shot glass. One shot glass... that cost 35€...

Frankly, 35€ seems on the steep side for 8 shot glasses if you ask me, but for ONE? Madness! Now, the "verre" isn't pluralised, and the picture is of one shot glass, but still, I was kind of looking at it wondering if they did that with the product code on purpose. Because who is spending that much on a  single shot glass? Is a single shot glass even any use to anyone? Buying just one shot glass conjures up a pretty depressing image. Actually, they are by appointment to Her Maj, so if I ever meet the Queen at least I can toast her in the style to which she is accustomed.

Now here's the tricky part - I don't think Liz would be mad enough to deliberately spend that much on one shot glass, but on the other hand, you can't exactly ask someone if they've taken leave of their senses if that was actually what they intended to get you.

So I texted her the following picture with a message saying thank you for my present, it's so fancy I'm using it to drink champagne:

Yes, I'm drinking Mumm on the couch in my mauve dressing gown out of a 35€ crystal shot glass. Just before I lit a cigar with a 100€ note.

...And got back a message saying "Haha, never thought of using them for champagne, glad you like them". *Them*. Not sure whether to (drunkenly?) confess some time that she spent the equivalent of more than two months' salary for a minimum-wage Bangladeshi worker* on my princely vessel, or if it's nicer just to dodge the subject and hope we never do shots round mine again?

*And yes, that fact does put my (supposed to be) light-hearted dilemma into perspective.

PS, I didn't take any pictures at Christmas, but here's one of the cheeseball I made, which was enjoyed by all despite Mum thinking it was shamefully unsophisticated and dated for Europeans. Jules's mum had even googled how to serve a cheeseball (in the centre of an arc of crackers, seems legit).

Yummy

And here I am all dolled up for Christmas dinner and pretending to be thin via the miracle of angles

Or angels. It is Christmas, after all