C is for Christmas cards

Which, like a few other things, come under W for wife.  Feeling totally smug this year, I acted on the advice of the local postmaster and bought copious quantities of stamps in the weeks preceding the rise in postal costs in the spring; I could justifiably send out the usual mountain of festive greetings come the appropriate time of year without wincing too much each time I stuck on a stamp.

I must have been mad: had I completely forgotten the annual chore that ensures handwriting deteriorates yet further; that sees me scrabbling about in cupboards for left-over cards from previous years as I've run out, again; that makes me queue for an age in the post office with overseas cards, a resigned tone adopted as I reassure the person behind the counter that I know it's long past the posting date for Outer Mongolia, but if I could send it anyway, the recipient will feel festive sometime before Easter.

I always have good intentions: I'll begin writing them early, leave the local cards until later to ensure postal dates are met, write news to those dearly beloved we haven't seen for a while, look out the 'new address' addresses before 20th December, persuade the other half to write a few. Hmm. Those whose surname begins with A, or even B or C may, just, be able to read from whom their card is sent and even, if they care, a brief line or two about levels of chaos - and water - in the celestial swamp. D-Z have no such hope, the long list of names with a squiggle representing each of us, is probably from this family.

I write them because some sadistic part of me likes to plough on through the god-awful handwriting and repetitive writing of news and names; we like to keep in touch with old friends and family, we want to hear news of how they're getting on, whose doing what and when and if they're thinking of traversing oceans and mountains to get to Europe or even Somerset this coming year and whether their offspring might backpack this way, or how they bumped into so and so half way down the Grand Canyon. And that is how H for Husband fulfills his part of the Christmas card scenario; he reads them and then after Christmas remarks that we haven't heard from x, y or z this year and so reads them again to remind himself that we have and wonders how the links are maintained year after year...