24 year old Paul Taylor from Leicester found out last year how much trouble forgetting mother’s day can cause. When he was faced with frosty stares and silence on March 14th 2010 he was struggling to work out what he had done wrong. It wasn’t until the next day that he realised he had let mother’s day pass without so much as a card. Still living at home with his parents, this made things quite awkward as his mother refused to speak to him for a month afterwards and only started doing his washing and ironing again after 6 months.
Determined not to make the same mistake again this year he started the search for a special gift with weeks to spare in an attempt to make up for the previous year’s unfortunate incident. He racked his brains trying to think of something that would make a really memorable gift, but struggled for inspiration. Then in an advert break during Coronation Street his prayers were answered when he saw an advert for ‘Beautiful’ by Calvin Klein, which described the new fragrance as the perfect gift for mother’s day.
Excited by the prospect of being able to make amends for the previous year’s mishap with not just a good gift, but a perfect gift, Paul headed out to the shops the following day. He picked up the perfume, splashed out the extra £1 to have it gift wrapped and chose a nice card to go with it. All set with 2 weeks to spare he was feeling like it was a job well done. But then when he went to get some lunch disaster struck.
‘I was feeling pretty good about myself, had the perfect gift for mother’s day and was looking forward to seeing the look on my mum’s face. But then I saw a poster advertising ‘Made in Dagenham’ on DVD as the perfect gift for mother’s day. I was confused as to which one actually was the perfect gift, and not wanting to drop myself in trouble 2 years running I thought I’d better buy that too.’
Things soon went from bad to worse as Paul saw several other adverts and posters for various products all claiming to be the perfect gift. As of today he has purchased 41 different fragrances, 37 DVDs and 35 books as well as almost the entire contents of a branch of Thornton’s, at a total cost of just over £4,000.
Since March 27th he has been shut in his bedroom refusing to watch TV, listen to the radio or leave the house.
His mother meanwhile is waiting to see if she gets Just Dance 2 for the Wii, which she has been dropping hints about for weeks.