Do all your other Christmas gifts pale into insignificance next to… The Gadget?

Here it comes: The Gadget is about to be unwrapped.

Like any average good Joe, I find that one very special Christmas gift will always outrank the others, and it will always be The Gadget. My parents would put it under all the other presents beneath the tree so I’d get to it last after a frenzied morning of paper-ripping. One Christmas Day my Mum even hid The Gadget until after lunch, theatrically announcing "Oh, what do we have here? More presents?"

I knew the present was coming. I had spent the previous three months tracking my parents’ movements, recording in my advent agenda when the Gadget arrived and ticking the boxes when it was [ ] wrapped, [ ] labelled and [ ] hidden at the back of the parental wardrobe. I am all eyes, I am all ears. Faith is mine.

Over the years, The Gadget at Christmas has been everything from Billy Blastoff to Dippy Duck in a blindfold. The only exceptions were during teen Saturnalias in which I preferred to receive music albums chosen from a carefully curated list, although arguably some of these turned up on audio cassette rather than vinyl so arguably counted as gadgets on account of their moving parts.

No matter what The Gadget present is, I will invariably break it – and subsequently work out how to glue/screw/Sugru it back together again – all within the space of that very afternoon. It’s all part of the Christmas routine. Some people look forward to emptying their stockings, over-steaming the Brussels and watching The Queen on TV. Me, I can’t wait to cart The Gadget off to my room for its ritual breakage and clumsy reassembly.

I am pleased that my offspring did their best to uphold the family tradition, my Christmases of early fatherhood occupied in glueing bits that had snapped off remote control cars or dismantling games consoles to get the CD tray back into its tracks. I trust my grown-up children maintain these high standards of wanton Yuletide vandalism as part of their own annual routine.

There was, of course, that one Christmas spent with my parents-in-law when my timing was thrown off-course. The French save their biggest meal of the season for midnight on Christmas Eve, after which they open all their presents, announce they are stuffed and stagger straight off to bed. I spent the following seven hours wide awake in bed and staring up at the ceiling, counting the seconds until I could get to work on The Gadget.

Since then, I have made everyone aware of my peculiar British customs of opening Christmas presents on Christmas Day and not attempting to eat six-course meals while nodding off at 00.00 hours. My new neighbours have been warned.

In fact, well-wishers turning up at our door this year will not even have to guess whether they have arrived before, during or after my Gadget’s temporary destruction. In these times of social distancing, I have found safer and legally compliant methods of projecting its current status to unexpected visitors.

Now the 364-day wait has ended, it’s time to rip away the paper! I wait a few more seconds, trying to guess what it might be. This is pointless as I know what it is already, having bought and wrapped it myself. But you never know, I might still be wrong. Like that Easter when I set up a chocolate egg hunt so adeptly that the future Mme D was unable to locate them all and I couldn’t remember where I’d hidden them.

We found them in the autumn.

I sometimes marvel that this sort of thing never happened to Christmas presents when I was a child, as my Dad unilaterally decided that the family would live in a chilly, damp 1930s house that had never been redecorated since its construction. Losing things for months on end would have been easy in that house with its dark corners, uneven floorboards, gaps in the wall panelling and entire rooms that had been designated as Protected Places of Environmental Interest to Arachnids.

It was so dark in there that candles burned more quickly and new lightbulbs popped within weeks of installation as their illumination was sucked out faster. It was so cold that it would have been feasible for Christmas presents placed under the tree to be partially hidden under a snowdrift caused by our own exhalations.

Talking of Mme D hunting for Easter chocs, there was a time when I would consider it a marital duty to ensure she also received some sort of product from Cyber Père Noël. This has rarely worked out for two reasons: firstly, she’s not interested in fiddly tech presents that require the recipient to read instructions written in Chinglish, and secondly, didn’t you read the first reason?

Anyway, the moment has arrived. The Gadget awaits. I know what it is, of course. I am all eyes, I am all ears. Faith is mine, remember?

Except… there’s nothing to unwrap. This isn’t unusual since, as usual, I ran out of wrapping paper on Christmas Eve and couldn’t be arsed to go outdoors in search of supplies unless they’re the kind that can be poured into a glass. Even the associated gift of a new smartphone is sitting to one side in its boring white box, just as it appeared on the shelf when I picked it out in the shop.

The Gadget itself might be unwrapped but it’s right in front of me. I can’t wait to get on with breaking it, and then fixing it.

The Gadget of Dabbs Christmas 2020 is 5G.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

ALISTAIR DABBS is a freelance technology tart, juggling tech journalism, training and digital publishing. He acknowledges that this edition of ‘Wimps’ has turned up out of the blue after an absence of a few weeks. But he has been busy and you’re getting this for free. He wonders whether you might be interested in settling this matter with a financial arrangement. No, thought not. More in Something for the Weekend, Sir? every Friday at The Register.