The Weasel

The Weasel suggests some ideal Christmas gifts, such as silver handcuffs for her, a petrol can for him and lollipops for everyone

WHOA! STEADY on there! What can you be thinking of, dashing off to the shops without taking advantage of the Weasel's annual Pick of the Prezzies service? For months, my highly-paid team of researchers have been sifting through a mountain of publications, sorting wheat from chaff, gold from dross, and swans from geese to come up with the ne plus ultra of gift ideas. But what am I doing gabbing away? Time's a-wasting. Let's plunge in.

For the woman in your life, what could be more luxuriously pampering than The Oldie's suggestion of a wooden clothes-horse (pounds 44.50)? That perennial quandary of what to buy Dad is swiftly overcome with the petrol can (pounds 55) proposed by Living etc magazine. Surely no metropolitan home will be complete this Christmas without the stainless steel toothpick dispenser (pounds 55), or the condom-shaped glass vase (pounds 27) discovered by Time Out? All animal lovers will be enraptured by the fish-shaped hot-water bottle (pounds 1.55) and the pig-face soap (pounds 14) suggested by The Observer magazine. Maintaining the zoomorphic theme, the irresistible ideas of Sainsbury's The Magazine include silver mussels with gold-plate lining (pounds 130 per pair), and a fluffy polar bear (pounds 1,100).

The Backwards alarm clock (pounds 17) proposed by Ideal Home should ensure every day starts with a chuckle. Elle Decoration's selection of gifts "to win you friends for life, not just Christmas" include "paper-thin beakers in disposable China" (pounds 5). The only drawback is having to order them from Arnhem in the Netherlands. Tinkle, smash!

Combining practicality and economy, the sterling-silver KitKat holder (pounds 295), advocated by the Evening Standard magazine, should put paid to broken-biscuit blues. Similarly, this journal feels that someone's life will not be complete without a silver Coca-Cola holder (including straw) for pounds 650. Finally, one can only picture the gratitude of anyone fortunate enough to receive the wildly profligate gift suggested by The Independent: Chupa Chups lollipops (10p each).

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TALKING OF presents, the run-up to Christmas also sees the arrival of Mrs Weasel's birthday. Since this year's total is a significant number, we made our way to a specialist London shop for a suitable trinket. Despite the silver handcuffs on a velvet cushion in the window and the elaborate dog collar and lead prominently displayed within, we were not looking for exotica intended to add spice to the doldrums of middle age.

I should explain that we were in the luxurious premises of Gucci on Old Bond Street. Costing pounds 125, the collar and lead is indeed intended for some pampered pooch. The shop has sold all but one of its stock of dog baskets made from plaited Tuscan goat leather (pounds 595), though there are still a number of silver doggy bowls (pounds 125) available. As for the handcuffs, they are an ironic reference to the 29-year sentence passed last month on Patrizia (the "Black Widow") Reggiani, who paid 500 million lire (almost pounds 190,000) for the contract killing of her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci. "It was worth every lira to see him dead," reflected Patrizia. "But he wasn't worth one lira more."

Admittedly, the sterling silver handcuffs engraved with the Gucci name are not just there for show (the company is not known for passing up commercial opportunities) You can snap up a pair for pounds 490. "Yes, we've sold a lot," a Gucci spokeswoman told me. But not to Mrs W, I hasten to add.

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ANGELS HAVE been fluttering through your letterbox. They happen to be rather haute couture emissaries of heaven - the one on the First Class Christmas stamp boasts golden fingernails. For whatever reason, the vogue for angels is stronger than ever this year. To find out more, I popped along to London's angelic HQ. This is not St Paul's or Westminster Abbey, but the National Gallery. According to its excellent CD-ROM catalogue, the gallery has 212 works with angels.

The very first work you see in the Sainsbury Wing, The Assumption of the Virgin, attributed to Francesco Botticini, is chock-a-block with feathery spirits arranged in the rigid class structure of the heavenly host. The Ministers (Principalities, Arcangels and Angels) are a bunch of po-faced jobsworths, but the middle-ranking Governors (Dominions, Virtues and Powers) are enjoying a bit of a chin-wag, while the top-notch Counsellors (Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones) are chortling away.

Fortunately, the angels in other masterpieces reject this tedious hierarchy. Sporting wings like blue flames, the blonde babes in the Wilton Diptych pose like supermodels at a photo-shoot, their arms casually interlaced or draped around each other's shoulders. Lowering the tone a bit, a few raffish male angels also hang about the gallery. The Archangel Michael by Pietro Perugino is a spit for Rory Bremner. Having just chopped the head off Lucifer, here manifested as a snake, Piero della Francesca's St Michael looks like he might be in the jellied eel business. Admittedly, the swan's wings sprouting from his shoulders would not pass without remark on the Old Kent Road.

But perhaps the most truly angelic sight is to be seen immediately outside the National Gallery, where stands the narrow cone, somewhat asymmetrical this year, of the national Christmas Tree. A touching annual gift from Norway, it is illuminated by a dancing necklace of hundreds of white bulbs. At the apex, they amalgamate into a solid point of light. No medieval theologian would have had any doubt what he was looking at.

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ALONG WITH a large chunk of the populace, I've spent an unusual amount of time sniffing round the fragrance counters in the last few days - I usually avoid such spots for fear of those aftershave-squirting vampires who pounce on innocent male necks. Anyway, my eye was taken by a new scent called Odeur 53 from Commes des Garcons, which enticingly describes itself as "an abstract anti-perfume". Intrigued, I asked for more details. According to a press release, the "impressions" given by Odeur 53 include "styrofoam radiation", "warm blood", "transubstantiated bliss", "cytokinetic silences", "thunder of glass", "helium desires", "photocopied vapours", "liquid igloo", "rivers of aluminium", "musty cries", "desperation of forms to come", "invisibility remembered" and, in slight contradiction, "no memory". Its "ingredients" are said to include "nail polish", "ultimate fusion", "flash of metal", "mineral intensity of carbon", "cellulosic smell" and, more tempting of all, "burnt rubber". It's a funny thing, but despite the best anti-efforts of C des G, their anti-scent smells quite nice.