Getting Personal

                Not for the faint-hearted – gifts for the brave
            
                Back in the olden days, buying gifts for men did not need much thought. The mature man was more than happy with a bottle of finest malt whisky or a pair of socks, and the younger chap was thrilled to bits with a tie and bottle of aftershave to splash on all over. No longer are all men easy to buy presents for. If they want a bottle of Scotch they go off and buy one, and by now they have enough ties and socks to sink a battle ship. As for aftershave, the bathroom shelf is positively cluttered with male beauty products as our modern man gets in touch with his sweeter smelling self.

Despite all that, there are still a number of categories that men fall into, such as the husband or boyfriend, the father, uncle, brother, friend or even boss. These chaps need to be considered individually. You can't just buy ten watches and hand them out regardless of their interests. So, you must find out what they are into, be it sport, theatre, dancing, dining or drinking. Or maybe you could consider how daring they may be. Would they do a bungee jump, leap from a plane with no guarantee of the parachute opening, scuba dive with sharks, or do they prefer to sip a glass of wine and watch the Antiques Road show for kicks? 

There are so many amazing and original gifts for men that have more than a small element of danger about them. So, if you think they are up to it and up for it, get them out of their comfy chairs and into the world of the adrenalin rush. For the high flyers in your life what better gift than a Flying Lesson Experience day? You could even go and watch him in action as he tries to defy gravity. If you think he's in need of something even more exhilarating than this, a helicopter flying lesson may be more appropriate as he finds a solution to dodging the rush hour traffic and imagines landing on his very own copter pad in the back garden. And for the more romantic thrill seeker, a lesson in a Tiger Moth biplane fully dressed for the part in goggles and flying jacket will have him thinking he's Biggles and have you reaching for the camera. There is probably someone you know that needs that extra thrill to be added, so the gift for this guy has to be a tandem sky dive from 13,000 feet, dropping at a speed of 120 miles per hour while attached to an instructor. This gift will probably knock his socks off and turn him grey overnight, but he'll remember it forever, and be able to bore all his friends with the story for years to come. While he's leaping into a lot of empty sky, why not go and treat yourself to a sky dive simulation in the safety of a wind tunnel where you can experience a free fall without the added element of extreme danger? Then you can compare and contrast your different flying experiences together. The most stimulating flight related gift for men though has to be a helicopter buzz, involving vertical flying with a hair raising swoop over the ground at 120 miles per hour. Personally, I'd rather keep my lunch where it is thank you very much, but many of you would do anything to avoid the quiet life. 

For the more serene than extreme thrill seeker, a charming gift is an opportunity to go hang gliding with an instructor and perhaps have a go at learning to control the glider. For the ultimate in get-away-from-it-all total peace and quiet for the frazzled, stressed and overworked man in your life, he will really appreciate a chance to go up into the sky in a microlite and experience what it must have felt like to be one of the early aviation pioneers, up there with hardly anything between them and the elements. This gift is probably best experienced on a fine summer's day as the height reached by the craft is around 1500 feet, and you wouldn't want to be up there in a hail storm, or gusty wind for that matter. 

But for the most macho of chaps, the ideal gifts for men has to be, and here's your chance to call his bluff, an aerobatics flight, where the flight instructor will do some unnecessarily scary maneuvers to take his breath away before offering him the chance of having a go himself. Make sure you take a gang of his friends to witness this once in a life time event, and do have the camera aimed at his face as he climbs down from the cock pit at the end of the session. In this way, you can get as much pleasure out of his gift as he does.

Related article: Ever fancied yourself as the next James Bond (Gifts for Men)