"Darling You Shouldn't Have..."

H, though pleased and expectant to receive customary gifts for formal occasions as birthdays or anniversaries, generally takes a dim view of any other more informal offerings.

As so many women of her type - i.e. women in general - H will either find fault with the thing itself as being 'too large', 'too red', 'too last year' etc., etc., or else suspect the worst.

Flattering - if false - to be thought capable of seeking to hide the proverbial lipstick on the dog collar behind a clutched bunch of flowers, it is somewhat lowering to be thus silently challenged when merely wishing to express some spontaneous token of affection for the lawful spouse.

Admittedly one is forced to accept that there has been the odd moment when one has sought to pass off as a 'present' a jar or dozen of simply poisonous damson jam from a grateful, if culinary-challenged, parishioner. But beyond that nothing untoward.

At least, though, I can reasonably claim that even if the new side table for the hall is too large, the paint to do the bathroom too red, or the smart frock too last year - even given all of that there is generally some obvious rationale of gift between eager giver and uncertain recipient that would easily be spotted by some neutral third-party analyst.

What third-party analyst though could possibly make sense of this? An American doctor has just been gaoled for severing a hand from a corpse. No bog-standard cadaver molester however this fellow. When challenged as to why he had done it he replied "I wanted something to give to a stripper to impress her."

He thought - on spec - that she just might want a severed hand as an impressive surprise? She intimated to him that a severed hand would be just the ticket for her? Neither proposition bears much scrutiny - in entirely the sense that one simply doesn't wish to believe either is humanly plausible.

(Actually, of course, had he pulled it off - as it were - I can guarantee she would have responded "But darling we've all the hands we need for the new flat. Feet! Bring me feet!")