New Year, New Wishlist 2018

I’ve just had a look at last year’s wishlist. It was 28 items long, and while I didn’t tick off much, it’s nice to see that some wishes were fulfilled, namely the flask, a wireless speaker, vouchers and tickets to the football. It’s fair to say that I could have tried harder to win certain items (a major problem when you focus your energies on lower-odds comps) but at the same time, have you any idea how hard it is to find prize draws for tampons?!

With this in mind, I’m tweaking the wish list for 2018. Naturally, some things will never change: like any normal human being, I still want spa days and scotch. Following a particularly vibrant festive period with my children, however, I’m wondering if technology could make me a better man, hence my new-found hunger for noise-cancelling headphones.

As ever, I’m broadly grouping my desires into basics, boring things, tech, experiences and cash & cash equivalents.

Basics are the kind of thing that should come through the door instead of credit card bills. Were granola distributed under a kind of universal credit system, for example, the world would be a better place.

Then comes the one-off purchases that I keep postponing, on account of my preference for comfort acquisitions, such as trainers and biscuits.

As for tech, not only do I find it hard to justify investing in home entertainment when that money could be better spent addressing the children's most recent vandalism, I am also a documented luddite. My telly, for example, predates HD, and the only reason I don’t still have an enormous CRT one is because my cousin kindly gave me his old one when he updated a few years back!

Cash and cash equivalents are, I’m sure on everyone’s wishlist. I’m desperate to extend into our loft, so if I can divert any of our regular income towards this massive goal then I’d be over the moon.

Finally, experiences fall into three categories: jollies for me; jollies for the children; and jollies for everyone. The colour scheme of my wishlist would suggest that I’ve filed “spa” under “jollies for everyone”. The argument here is that it is actually in EVERYONE’s interest to send me on spa breaks. The simple fact is that if I am submerged in a hot tub for two days, isolated from the incessant hullabaloo of my offspring, I do become a slightly more patient parent. I grant that sometimes the transformation lasts only for an hour or two, but I assure you it’s worth it.

What about you guys? What are you hoping to find in your comping stocking in 2018? Let me know in the comments below!