A number of people have been asking what I’d like for my upcoming - ick - 21st birthday.

I’d like a can of worms.

Oxfam must have been rolling about with self-appreciatve laughter when they came up with that one. Anyway. Worms aren’t the only option. Oxfam also sell trees, books, irrigation, veterinary kits, toilets, and, of course, crocodiles. Munch.

The UK range is even greater. My favourite is - you guessed it - school dinners for 100 children. £6 for 100 meals.

Something from Oxfam Unwrapped (UK - US) is genuinely what I’d like from anybody conspiring to buy me a birthday present, please. I can think of nothing that would please me more (besides a cuddle, which, like the proverbial courtesy, both costs nothing and is demanded, and as such may be given as a supplement to other gifts).

And, in case any cynics are pondering that I’m simply suffering a brief high of unmaterialism, remember that I’m going to be spending my birthday and a good amount of time following in the typically-oh-so-rare company of my sweetheart. What more could I want? : )

By my dad’s strict standards, even the whitest lie is sinful, to steal the merest thing reprehensible. Yet I find that he’s been through the CDs that I expressly labelled “for Oxfam” and hoarded several (compilations, no less, the contents of which he probably already owns on other CDs) that he wants for himself.

Five hundred meals.

Thoughtless piety and self-righteousness are unpleasant to suffer; fundamentalism that results in absurdly simplistic morals is foolish; but hypocrisy where those two are so rife is vile. It’s made me very, very angry.