This week I received a parcel from Hermes. Unusually for them, it was undamaged and actually contained something.* Even more unusually, it was addressed to “frogboy sadface”. Inside were two things: a sheet of paper with a happy and sad face…

And this utterly wondrous little carved wooden netsuke of a frog wrestler.

It is lovely, and obviously not particularly cheap (a gander at ebay suggests even the most bottom-barrel netsuke start in the £20-30 range.) I hit up my main friends group chat to see if this was some sort of delayed Christmas present (that would be in keeping with Hermes.) Total denial! I asked two other group chats, I asked my family, I messaged a few individual friends. Everyone I have contacted in the centre of this Venn diagram has denied it.**

It is not:

• from my other half
• from my family
• from any of the ‘usual suspect’ friends
• an exceptionally informally presented leaving gift from my last boss
• a rerun of that time I forgot someone was posting me a hat

Who did this?

* For those unaware of them, Hermes are the Challenger Deep of shit quality in the already abyssopelagic UK parcel delivery landscape. At Christmas 2020 a Hermes courier handed me a ripped-open jiffy bag which emphatically did not contain some expensive books and hand-knitted gloves from my mum, and ran off. I don’t know who they treat worse, their customers or their staff.
** Except Tom, but I think he’s just being Tom.