It was the annual Christmas in July celebrations last night and a jolly time was had by all. I know that technically it’s already August. It just happened that not everyone could make weekends in July so we took the liberty of improvising into the following month. Apart from the mountains of delicious food (mmmm…golden syrup dumplings) the highlight of the evening is always the gift giving.

The tradition is a sort of anti-Christmas secret Santa arrangement. Firstly, each guest finds the worst thing in their house that they want to get rid of and wraps it in beautiful Christmas paper. I can usually rely on my hoard of presents from various grandparents to supply something. This year I took a glass vase painted with pink flowers and a glitzy green beaded photo frame. Then half way through the evening we all gather round the tree and each get a raffle ticket. When your number is called you get to choose a gift from under the tree. The first person has the choice of all the gifts. The second person chooses their gift, unwraps it and then can decide whether to keep what they chose or swap their gift with the first person. The third person then chooses their gift and can choose to keep their own or swap with either of the first two…and so on. So it’s clearly best to be last in the raffle because you get the choice of everything in the room.

In past years I have taken home an old iron fry pan that had been used as a skateboarding jump, a pair of knee pads, a twee dried flower decorated photo frame and many more pieces of junk. This year however I struck gold and managed to hold on to the recurring gift that appears every year, and that everyone wants to win.