Here we go again ... It's the time to send cards with pre-printed season's greetings. It practically the only time of year I send personal correspondence by snail mail, and it just happens to coincide with a terrible delivery performance by the Post Office. Not that our local postman does not work extremely hard, and extremely long hours. It seems to me that we do this purely because of a sort of collective reluctance to be the first to send an electronic substitute.
I agonise over what to write in the card. It's hard to be too effusive when writing to someone you last had contact with a year ago, also via this method so singularly lacking in feedback. I usually stick to writing my name and the name of one or more family members at the bottom of the greeting. I don't feel remotely like including a kind of circular letter. These have dwindled in popularity over the years for fairly obvious reasons. Although we hardly ever send one (we did send one upon returning from spending a number of years working abroad, more than ten years ago), I actually love reading them. The problem is that you can look like a prize prat when your prize-winning son ends up in a Thai jail for drug smuggling.
It's easier to decide who to send cards to. My rule is that I will always send a card to anyone who sends me to, even if I have no idea who they are. If believe yourself to be a counterexample then consider if I might have an out of date address for you, or if, indeed, you have an up-to-date address for me. I know that you might have sent a card or an email around giving your new address, but old addresses have a habit of creeping back into address lists like ground elder, smothering the new ones. I do send to some old friends who I might not receive cards from also.
Most cards I send are to long-standing family members. I send one card on behalf of my family. I therefore have to decide on whether to name all our family members, name just me and my wife, even, sometimes, to name the pets. Former work colleagues and random friends from school and university are much easier. I just don't send cards to you!
I always send rubbish cards. Well, they are not total rubbish, but they are not great. I bought a few thousand as a job lot from eBay, with a vague plan to retail them, which never materialised. I always find it amazing that people will pay one pound fifty for a card in a newsagent when the same card can be bought from eBay for ten pence, but that's how the wonderful world of commerce behaves, and I'm in no position to change it.
Well, having raised expectations so much, let me anticipate non-delivery and non-sending now, and wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
