Never Knowingly Undersold.

I grew up in Northern Ireland and was born in the 80s. 

Growing up, London had sunshine, Wimbledon, M&S foodhalls and John Lewis.  If anyone ever headed to the mainland John Lewis was a much talked about tourist destination.

I turned 18, moved to England, became accustomed to having John Lewis in my neighbourhood and then aged 29 got engaged.  (Is this not the briefest history of someone's life you have ever read?)

29 years of never believing I would ever get close to putting on a white dress, of choosing dresses for my bridesmaids, of imagining flowers and colours and cakes and food to eat and guest numbers and ... a gift list.

I generally shy away from the idea of such a thing.  Appalled at the idea of sending someone a list of things they can buy for you, apparently it allows for several things - the inability to be bought 17 kettles, the fact that friends and family wish to bless you with an item for your new married life and the fact that these things are very welcome to a newly wed couple.  

It is with delight that I switch on our gorgeous new kettle - the last one had to be put on its stand at a certain angle and talked to in French to make it work.  Anyway I digress.

We ventured to John Lewis one cold Saturday in February, we were commissioned with a zapper and after a few teething problems from zapping nothing to zapping everything on one stand we finally got to grips with our zapper and went a bit crazy.  We got a voucher for complimentary coffee and a cake, it was a tad overwhelming, and to keep ourselves entertained we added a pram for over a grand and some onion goggles ( neither, thank god, were purchased!)

Then the dream with John Lewis ended.  The list. Not the gift one. Is endless.
  
"If you don't manage to zap everything you like today items can be added via the website" they delighted in informing us.  We couldn't though.  The website was under construction.
  
Our friends bought us some lovely things and we would then get contacted to say "No, the items bought are no longer in stock, no longer being made or maybe, have you perhaps, even dreamt them up yourselves? "

Now it took a while but finally they agreed to only contact us via email.  
Why?
Well, before the wedding, during the wedding, and whilst on honeymoon I had 6, 5-minute conversational messages from...
My mum? 
NO. 
A friend? 
NO.
no no NO.  
A selection of Scotland's finest cheeriest phone operators informing me that storage jars were out of stock.   5 minutes, and that is not an exaggeration.
Now I love a Scot, a man who one day I hope will be my brother-in-law I could not love more and yet my love for the nation ( my kindred nation) dwindled with every 'Och aye', and breath.

One day we will be blessed with another delivery of very welcomed, lovely gifts, they may not be the ones our friends bought us but we will love them the same. 

We are exceptionally blessed to have any gifts to open at all, I know, and this is not the biggest worst drama in the world.  

There will however arrive a glimmer of delight when we disown the gift list number to the memoirs of history and move forward without a green and white bag in sight and with our real Scottish friends calling and not strangers.