We Are The Champions

Christmas is all about great teamwork, according to husbands who want to take credit where no credit is due.

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A round this time every year a mysterious stranger enters our lives. They don’t stay for long, they don’t make a mess and they don’t outstay their welcome, which I should be grateful for considering the influx of relatives who appear over the Christmas period, often uninvited.

They also make themselves known around family birthdays and always near Mother’s Day. My husband announces their arrival when he walks into the room and asks me the same question he’s been asking me for 21 years: “What have WE got my Dad for Christmas?” At this point I stop whatever it is that I’m doing, look him in the eye and ask the same question I’ve been asking for 21 years: “Just who is this WE, darling? Can you please introduce me to them? WE hasn’t got anything for your father for Christmas. I’ve purchased your father a new golf shirt which I’ll be wrapping up and putting under the tree from all of us, but WE has nothing to do with the Christmas shopping, not this year, not the last nor the year before that.”

His exasperated reply is always the same: “Don’t be funny, what have