A FAT MAN AND HIS DOLLIES

So what did i get for Xmas? What was my brilliant, jaw-dropping pressie?

I got dollies.

Seriously. I got a couple of dolls.

Now, this is what I mean when I talk about the best thing about gift giving being the zing, the AHA! moment.

That excellent Tasmanian writer Tansy Rayner Roberts has a sideline. Deepings Dolls, a company that specialises in hand turned wooden figurines with the most delicately applied painted costumes you've ever seen. They're elegant, and delicate, and visually quite beautiful, and I'd never in a million years think to buy one for myself.

But Lyn did. What's more, she really thought about it, and so, on Christmas day, I found myself not only holding a couple of dolls, but holding the main characters from Napoleone's Land: Napoleone Buonaparte and his teenage bride, Mary Pitt, the illegitimate daughter of the English Prime Minister.

One-of-a-kind orders, not on the website, absolutely unique wooden figurines designed and created for me alone. Nobody else in the world owns them. They are mine alone.

Honestly, is that not the most brilliant present you can think of someone getting?

A fat man and his dollies.

Napoleone and Mary.

N&M in close-up.