CHRISTMAS CARDS GALORE!

After being confined to barracks for the past week with a stinking cold and cough I finally got out today. A most important trip to the printers was necessary. No, it was not for our usual Annual Christmas card which I delivered a fortnight ago but rather another commission I have decided upon.

I am probably the only person who enjoys Christmas for the cards. Giving cards; getting cards. And .... we get them in shoals! Here is our modified side-board with them starting to pile up, ever so happily, in the letters basket. You measure them in horizontal inches along the mantlepiece? I measure them in vertical inches in the basket!

Even as a child I always made a thing about cards - never present wrapping, funnily enough - and also letter writing. I like the feel of nice card and I like the activity of putting pen to paper. I wonder if this is because when we were learning to write at school (age 7?) as opposed to print, we were regularly given these writing drills called The MacLean Method of Writing. It involved doing repeated letters along the line. Come to think of it I think that this was training in what is called cursive (slanting) writing. Anyhow.... I just liked doing it and never tired of doing a row of capital M's or W's! (Who, for Heaven's Sake was MacLean?!)

So to this day, I write. By that I mean, I write cards and I use a fountain pen and take ages over the whole Christmas card exercise. "Palaver" it is not ... at least not in my book. And so, I guess it really is no surprise that we get given a lot. (Well, we have moved so it keeps us all up-to-date.)

So here are the cards coming in through our letter-box. Wonderful! Circular letters with family news? I don't have a problem with that. Again, I put the kettle on, slice a wedge of the Christmas cake I made this year and settle in for a good read.

But to my tale: I took some artwork to the printer's today and it is going to be for a couple of hundred personal notecards, full colour. I am chuffed with the way it is all turning out and will describe everything in full detail once the order is back and people have received their alloted number. Some people do all their Christmas shopping for presents on Amazon Books. It is a good system and, I have to say, works very well. Me? I get cards printed (well, this year, anyhow....). Done, finito for gift-giving.