{"id":657224,"date":"2025-12-27T05:16:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T05:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/657224\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T05:16:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T05:16:27","slug":"a-bats-head-the-best-and-worst-gifts-11-people-have-ever-received-well-actually","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/657224\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A bat\u2019s head\u2019: the best and worst gifts 11 people have ever received | Well actually"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exchanging gifts is delightful. It can also be fraught. How do you choose something the receiver will enjoy or find meaningful? And must you act pleased if you receive a tub of anti-cellulite cream?<\/p>\n

Eleven Guardian readers shared the best and worst gifts they have ever received. Can we learn anything from their experiences? Perhaps not: \u201cDon\u2019t just give something that appeals to you,\u201d writes one, and \u201cAlways gift something you want,\u201d writes another.<\/p>\n

No wonder so many of us have a hard time figuring it out.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s a bat\u2019s head<\/strong>\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best<\/strong>: My husband took me on a cruise up the Nile river for my birthday. It was the trip of a lifetime.<\/p>\n

Worst<\/strong>: One winter evening at college, a fellow student came up to me and declared: \u201cThis is for you. It\u2019s a bat\u2019s head.\u201d It was a very heavy box. He had never expressed romantic interest in me before, and I was so surprised I said nothing. It was cold, so I hurried back to my dorm room. I had feared it was an anatomical specimen, but what I found was a mass of hardened plaster of paris. My roommate and I went to the dumpster and dropped it in.
Brenda, Portland<\/p>\n

An unwelcome beauty product<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best<\/strong>: When my son was 13, he started working as a paper boy in the afternoon, six days a week. My Christmas<\/a> present from him that year was a food processor, which I could not afford to buy myself as a single, low-income mother.<\/p>\n

Worst<\/strong>: A male colleague gave me Lanc\u00f4me anti-cellulite cream.
Guri, 72, Norway<\/p>\n

\u2026 Another unwelcome beauty product<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best<\/strong>: My parents weren\u2019t gift givers. Mostly they just didn\u2019t buy anything, but for Christmas when I was 10, they bought me a new bike, and a trip to Germany to visit a friend by myself. I thought this was incredible. In hindsight, now that I have kids, I think maybe they were just trying to get rid of me for a break.<\/p>\n

Worst<\/strong>: When I was 17, my mum\u2019s friend bought me cellulite-reducing tights.
Kelly, Brighton<\/p>\n

A stinky ice tray<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best<\/strong>: My daughter surprised me with a trip to Kauai, Hawaii. The trip was magical. We watched giant sea turtles coming up on the beach and sunset to rest.<\/p>\n

Worst<\/strong>: Silicone ice cube trays. The giver said he saw me struggling with a regular tray. I thought it was a strange thing to be considered a gift. It also smelled bad. Anonymous, California<\/p>\n

Tim Curry (good) and Tim Curry (bad)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best<\/strong>: As a massive Tim Curry fan, I was surprised to find one of my former colleagues knew and liked his work. She gave me a mug printed with his most prominent characters. I\u2019m too scared to use it. It\u2019s special.<\/p>\n

Worst<\/strong>: The drawback of being a Tim Curry aficionado is that he\u2019s in a lot of films of doubtful quality. I think the worst is Four Dogs Playing Poker. My dad gave it to me for Christmas. I regifted it to an unsuspecting frenemy.
Bonnie, 42, Netherlands<\/p>\n

Marital highs and lows<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best<\/strong>: Ruby earrings from my soon-to-be second husband.<\/p>\n

Worst<\/strong>: A vacuum cleaner which was the beginning of an eventual divorce.
Anonymous, Virginia<\/p>\n

Gurus and fire rituals<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best<\/strong>: My then-guru gave me a beautiful, large bronze Quan Yin, seated on a dragon.<\/p>\n

Worst<\/strong>: One year, my friend gave me an ugly wooden carved gnome face. She loved and collected them. I was horrified. It felt evil! I\u2019d been invited to a new year\u2019s fire ritual, and it immediately went into the flames.
Anonymous, North Carolina<\/p>\n

Floor mats and singing fish<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best<\/strong>: Rubber floor mats for my first car, a Saab 900S. I lived in Chicago and needed to protect the car\u2019s carpet. It was the only thing I wanted and I was so happy to get it.<\/p>\n

Worst<\/strong>: Billy Bass<\/a>. Who needs a singing fish on a wall plaque?
Anonymous<\/p>\n

A quilt for a quiltmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

Worst<\/strong>: I have 30 years of experience making quilts. One Christmas, my mom bought me a Walmart quilt. I\u2019ve never figured out why.
Susan, retired, Georgia<\/p>\n

Deadly nuts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best<\/strong>: I used to work for a homeless charity, and one of my responsibilities was to supervise a workshop where people could learn woodworking skills. It had been a difficult year with a funding crisis looming. Out of the blue, the trainees presented me with a beautiful wooden candle box, crafted from cherry wood. It\u2019s still in use, and it holds red candles for my advent wreath.<\/p>\n

Worst<\/strong>: I received a large, fancy box of assorted nuts. I have a severe nut allergy, which most people are aware of. Or so I thought.
Anonymous, Scotland<\/p>\n

Thoughtful tea towels<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best<\/strong>: This will probably sound like many people\u2019s idea of a \u201cworst\u201d gift, but my husband got me two dozen new tea towels. We use them for cloth napkins and all sorts of household tasks. Getting more was thoughtful, and a sign my husband was listening to what I wanted rather than buying me something more conventional that I\u2019m supposed to want.
Maria, 40s, Minnesota<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exchanging gifts is delightful. It can also be fraught. How do you choose something the receiver will enjoy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-657224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115789836242348882","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}