Far better than a kick in the two front teeth

I'm borrowing (huh! copying) this one from Emma at Belgian Waffling, who got it from Katyboo. Both their lists are glorious. I started to comment chez Emma and then figured I'd better just bring it over here and give the damn thing some space.

So here, in no particular order, is my fantasy Christmas list:

1. For someone to invent chocolate that works along the same lines as celery. No, not stringy and tasteless, that would be awful. What I'm after is chocolate that causes you to lose weight, in the way that celery does (allegedly) if you eat enough of it. I'm never, ever, going to try with celery but chocolate? I'd be right there.

2. A switch (probably just under my right ear) that would deactivate the "faff" mode in my brain. Sweet Jesus, I would be a millionaire, a Pullitzer-winning author and a prize athlete by June if that switch just existed. Thing is, it doesn't.

3. Perspective. I'd kill for the ability to stand back from my life and see that everything makes sense, even when it doesn't, rather than living with my nose pressed up to the glass the whole time.
There's a quote by Jose Ortega y Gasset which basically points out that looking into the distance and looking at what's in front of you are mutually exclusive, to which I say: bollocks. Surely Santa, if not Jim, can fix it for me?
This seems to be a perennial end-of-decade wish for me - even at 8, I was such a nerdy kid I probably wanted perspective. Really I think it's about being nosy and wanting to know how things turn out, as well as needing reassurance.

4. Bravery. Not the saving-babies-from-burning-buildings kind, but the common-or-garden, stop-being-careful-about-what-you-wish-for-and-go-out-and-there-and-do-it-dammit, kind. I'm so pathetically risk-averse that I can't even steal a teaspoon without replacing it with one from home (true story). There's an awful lot of room between "A teaspoon will land me in jail" and "I will rescue this child..." etc, and next year, I intend to inch my way along the gap. As long as we're not perched up in the air.

We'll see. Some of them, at least, I ought to be able to find. And they won't require wrapping, which is great because I bloody hate wrapping (it requires the same genes as baking; the patience and order genes, and I possess neither).