The Gift

Best friends keep giving extremely generous gifts Give better ones in returnPhilip has a lot on his mind. At home, in his unnecessarily large, excessively expensive house in south London, he is attempting to become a Taoist master of love with his wife Alice, but his quest is forever being interrupted by the requests of his twin Can we have a pony – please? I want to go to boarding school – please? At work, in his shed/office at the bottom of the garden, between countless games of Minesweep and FreeCell, Philip is trying to pay the mortgage by writing instruction manuals for Korean bread-making machines. And, at parties where he is concerned that he is not taken seriously (he has been variously mistaken as a doctor/waiter and sinologist) Philip tells the world he is a scriptwriter, even though all he has managed to pen is a story he calls Wang the Unlucky Scholar.But, above all, Philip is worrying about his best friends Sean and Barry. The problem is they give great presents. Their gifts are a full set of Italian crockery, a handmade corkscrew from Venice. They give them on birthdays, at parties and quite often for no reason whatsoever. And, most distressingly, these presents break all bounds of two FA Cup Final tickets beside the royal box, a skiing holiday for Philip's entire family. These are gifts that hurt a man's pride, these are gifts that can never be matched.