I do enjoy the ritual of the Christmas card writing, especially when we seem to be about to undergo another round of covid mark iv or is it mark v I seem to have lost count. It is a simple way of showing your affection for the people in your life, no matter how infrequently you might see them. I had for a few years decided not to write Christmas cards and to donate to a charity, but it never felt the same and sometimes I think we live in too much of a nanny state which dictates what is seen as acceptable and right and proper and which is not. And if I want to waste my money on paper, stamps and ink, then I will, although I do concede and always buy charity cards these days. Long gone are the days where I would buy a bumper pack of 50 from Woolworths, the cardboard being that thin they would barely stand up to scrawl my good wishes to all and sundry. Although I wasn’t as bad as my friend Georgina, she used to carry a selection around in her handbag so she could write one, whilst on the hoof, to whoever she came across. I’m really not sure what the boys in the Kings Arms made of it all. But they all got a card.

This year I couldn’t find my inks, so I borrowed hubby’s precious pot of green ink. I’ve never chosen green ink for myself mainly because at school someone decided that if boys wrote in green ink that they were not to be trusted, that they were invariably mad. This was followed up by a close friend, who after a pretty nasty divorce decided to put an advert in the lonely hearts column to see if she could conjure up a few dates. Piles of letters came, who knew that there were so many keen men in the days before the internet. And even though she had gone to a different school, she immediately discarded the men who had written in green ink…. and there were quite a few. To be honest we had one of the best nights dissecting the letters for hidden clues about the personalities of the writers, but the green ink writers seemed to be the most troubled.

So when hubby had chosen the green ink for himself some years previously, I had valiantly tried to push him into another direction but he was not to be moved. I decided he probably was mad and it made me laugh how attached men seem to be to this particular ink colour.

I whiled away a happy couple of hours listening to Kings carols, watched the half finished Christmas tree lights flash (It is still half finished!) and the smell of the Christmas puddings steaming wafted through the house. Then hubby took them up to the main post office and off they went on their merry way.

Merry Christmas everybody.