Anniversary thoughts

In less than two weeks it shall be mine and Andy's fifth wedding anniversary. We are going to River Cottage for an anniversary treat. I thought, I'd better start looking for a suitable gift for Andy, especially as he has been so nice this year by letting me off work to faff about with writing.

The fifth wedding anniversary is represented by wood, apparently. Well, that's exciting isn't it? A bit of creative thinking is called for, methinks.

Right, what comes to mind when you think of 'wood?'

Trees. Sticks. Garden fences. Tables. Hardly inspirational so far.

'Here darling, I got you a stick for an anniversary present.'
'Thanks, dearest. And I got you a trip to River Cottage for a four-course meal.'

Think out of the box. Wood=trees=leaves=paper=books. Hmmm, potential there. Books always go down well. But a book on what? Something wood related maybe? Carpentry. Would Andy be safe with carpentry equipment? Well, he uses operating equipment at work and it's only once or twice a week he comes home with some surgery related injury. And it's been ages since he stapled himself to a rabbit.

Or a book on whittling. Andy has often mentioned he fancies a whittle. And you need a stick for whittling, so that would tie in nicely with the wood theme.

What about a wooden toy? Andy likes toys. Whatever he tells you he would like for Christmas, what he really means is that he wants toys. I try and get him something juvenile for Christmas but I don't like to encourage any potential regression into childhood.It's bad enough there's all that Doctor Who and Star Wars stuff from the 70's clogging up the attic without adding plastic crap from the 21st century into the equation.

I did toy with the idea of buying Andy a piece of woodland. I was assured (wrongly it turned out) that small pockets of woodland can purchased quite cheaply. Not for under £50 they can't. Unless you go to Bulgaria. Or Croatia. But it would be nice to have a bit of woodland, wouldn't it? Somewhere to encourage wildlife to flourish, to go for walks amongst the bluebells on sunny spring days, to build a little camp fire in winter and sit around it toasting muffins and singing 'Ging-gang-gooley.' One day, maybe. One day...

We have a ginormous piece of wood in the back garden in the form of our eucalyptus tree. Sometimes I stare up at it and think, how tall exactly do eucalyptus trees grow? Do they stop before they reach the moon, for example? We've had it cut back once in the five years we've lived here, and it just shot away into the sky within 6 months. It's an expensive thing, having a tree lopped back, and not something we can afford to have done again at the moment. But it serves as a useful shelter for the South Wing of Cluckinghen Palace. Mrs Poo and Mrs Slocombe are 'neath it as I write, because it is raining, has been raining all night and looks like it will continue to do so for the next week.

And I'm hoping that once a tree reaches a certain height it becomes impervious to force ten gales and thus will not go crashing into Heather's bedroom window during a high storm (especially as Heather is coming home on Thursday and something like a crashing tree might make her jump.)

So I'm still stuck for an original anniversary present idea. I think the person who decided how anniversaries should be represented had a distinct lack of imagination when they thought, 'Five years? Wood. That'll do. People like a nice stick.'

I may have to invent my own anniversary list. Five years?

Nintendo DS!!