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Saturday 13 December 2014

Christmas Letters




One the things about this time of year that really irritates me is the Grand Yuletide Letter some people seem to send out indiscriminately (and ill-advisedly to my mind).   You know the kind of thing, at least you will once you’ve received one.  There’s a formula to it, rather like an Enid Blyton book.   It’s not actually for you, it’s for the world in general and it’s not really a letter, it’s a platform for a self-important, swaggering rave about how wonderful they are, how very, very clever their children and grandchildren are, and how many simply splendid places they have visited and prizes they have won during the past year.   It’s full of names you don’t recognize (never an explanation as to who they might be) and the intention is to make you reflect upon how dull irrelevant your own life is together with those of your immediate family – and what is more, how very lucky you are to be on the sender’s Christmas Letter List.
For the curious, it goes something like this:

Hello All, just grabbing a moment or two to send a little Christmas Cheer to friends and family and let you know how the year has treated us.
Myra has been awfully busy of late  finishing her International Degree in Banking Law whilst officiating nightly at the Ebola Clinic and thankfully managed to complete it all with Honours.  She’s so relieved as at one stage she thought she might have to delay it all until next year.  We have now re-negotiated our weekends with Babs so that the twins only come to us every third weekend as it was getting a bit much trying to accommodate their violin and skating classes and Myra was getting tired.  They are both doing fantastically well – due to play a duo at the Town Hall in February.
Tyrone has been offered three film parts for this coming year and is wondering which one to take.
Hamish and Zac conquered that Everest North Face climb last month  - the youngest in the group again!  
Juanita and Maurice booked in for a walk through Nicaragua but just before they were to leave the divorce came through so in the end only Juanita went.  Maurice is currently sky-diving at Cape Wrath where he has just bought a holiday cottage.   It used to be a hunting lodge so a bit drafty but he’s almost completed the alterations.  Did a lot of it himself as it was so expensive flying tradesmen up to the Cape.
You will remember our youngest, Elissa.  Well she’s now quite grown-up at eighteen and finished her combined Maths & Physics degree rather early so opted for a gap year in Trinidad before choosing one of the positions she’s been offered.   She certainly has zest for life – we were surprised to hear via the Family Notices columns in The Herald that she had recently given birth to a son.  It was rather touching – it said, `To Elissa, daughter of Myra and Tom of Auckland, a son born in Trinidad’. Myra said it sounded a bit like a virgin birth.  Apparently she delivered him herself and the afterbirth was turned into pate and eaten at the birth celebrations!  Well, they all do these odd things these days don’t they?
Christian got married this year of course to one of the Astor girls- a great great niece of Nancy.  They are having to live as tax exiles in Jersey so unfortunately we don’t see as much of them as we would like to.

Hope all is well with your lot.  Keep in touch!   Tom, Myra & The Gang.   

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