Lost........................or......................A Very Unhappy Non-Christmas To You.

I may have said this before but it does seem to be a recurrent theme in my life - you're never ahead for long!
My soon-to-be ex-wife, who returned from a conference in London last night, bounded up to tell me today that she had bought me a Christmas present I would really like. Bit early, I thought. "Bit late," she said. Turns out she bought it for me for Christmas past (just past) but forgot to give it to me.
"How come you forgot to hand it over when I gave you your new rugby boots and the moustache trimmer?" I asked, cheerily. "I hid it," she said. "The trouble was, I forgot where I had hidden it."

Nothing I say from now on will sound like anything other than ungratefulness but this kind of thing is typical of STB EW. She would bag gold medals galore if freestyle losing things was an Olympic event. One of her most often spoken sentences is "Well it was there yesterday". Her most frequent utterance, however, has to be "It just fell apart in my hand".
Anyway, to return to the story, I thought that, late or not, a gift would be very welcome after what has been a difficult week or so. I said that, overwhelmed as I had been by the actual Christmas presents she gave me - socks, a DVD of Sleeping With The Enemy and a self-help book on body odour problems - I would really like to have my belated gift. The ensuing conversation went something like this:
STB EW: "Oh, no, sorry."
Reg: "Any particular reason."
STB EW: "Well I STILL can't remember where I've hidden it."
Reg: "Ah!"
STB EW: "It's really great. You would have loved it."
Reg: "What is........sorry, I'll rephrase that. What WAS it?"
STB EW: "I can't tell you that."
Reg: "Go on, I'll buy it - why?"
STB EW: "Well, that would spoil the surprise.
Reg: "The surprise of only finding out what it is when I open the present I'm not going to get, you mean?"
STB EW: "Yes."
Reg: "Why are to you telling me all this?"
STB EW: "I thought it would cheer you up to know that I had bought you a present?"
Reg: "A present which I'm not allowed to know about and I'm not going to get because no-one knows where it is?"
STB EW: "Yes."
Reg: "Well, you've certainly put my mind at rest on one or two things there and I am obviously feeling much better now, thanks. What's the number for the Samaritans?"
See? Ahead for a brief moment..........then, back to the world of dreams.
Never mind. Losers - and I mean that literally - can go to Grantham, if they can remember where it is.