The three deadly sins of Christmas card correspondence - and a bit of X Factor

I have reached a stage in life I never thought I’d reach. There are people on my Christmas card list with whom I have little or no contact throughout the rest of the year. I always used to laugh at my parents for sending cards to people that they didn’t speak to from one Christmas to the next - their only contact being a Christmas card with a token “Hope you‘re well!” written inside it, and question the point of it. Now I’m doing it myself. And still questioning why. I can’t really find an answer. I suppose part of it is politeness - if someone sends me a card, despite the fact that for whatever reason we have no contact during any month that doesn’t have a Dec in it, then I’m going to feel inclined to send one back - even though they‘re probably thinking exactly the same. There’s also that feeling that it’s just nice to know that the other person hasn’t dropped off the face of the earth since last year - although if the annual card didn’t turn up, would I really be sending out a search party?

At the other end of the scale, there are close friends who I see fairly regularly, but haven’t written a card for - mainly because I don’t know their exact postal address, and am not sure if or when I will see them in between now or Christmas. All this does make me rather question the point of sending Christmas cards in the first place and makes me lean towards the idea of doing the good deed of making a charity donation instead. But then you have to contact everyone you would have sent a card to and let them know that’s what they’re doing (in case they are indeed of the search party mentality or just think you‘re tight/can‘t be bothered). It’s all a bit of a minefield, really, albeit a festive, glittery one.

I reached another milestone this year which made me feel a bit like a proper grown up. I received my first ever proper Christmas “Round Robin” letter - something which also used to amuse me when my parents received them. For anyone unfamiliar, I mean those letters written to address everyone on the Christmas card list, giving a run down of everything the family have been up to during the course of the year, down to minute details about what instruments the children are learning to play, family illnesses, holidays and visits from elderly relatives. Again, they’re usually received from people you have little or no contact with during the course of the year. I can’t help but feel that this is a level of detail you don’t need from people that you’re in such infrequent contact with - if you needed to know it, you probably already would, and wouldn’t need a fairly impersonal communication to tell you everything that’s going on.

The final ‘sin’ of Christmas card etiquette, which, again, my parents were on the receiving end of on several occasions, to my great amusement, is the photographic card. Instead of choosing from the plethora of cards on offer in the shops - festive scenes of robins, snow, mistletoe, glittery baubles, Santa Claus, or any other one of the huge range of seasonal images available, some people choose to adorn their Christmas cards with photographs of themselves and/or their children. Thankfully, I’ve not yet received one of these, but I do feel it’s probably only a matter of time.

With my Christmas card writing now complete (save for any emergency last minute cards I have to write when I get one from someone I’ve not thought to send one to), I’m settling down for an evening of watching the X Factor final. With “Little Diana Vickers from Blackburn” out of the competition, I’m not sure who I’m going to be rooting for, but I know it’s not going to be Eoghan and his “Vote for Me” face - as identified by Harry Hill. Don’t even get me started on Eoghan. I’m hoping he’ll be the first one out tonight and he can forever be consigned to the ranks of contestants who just got a little bit further than they should have done. If he gets any further, it’s certainly going to be a travesty of Leon Jackson proportions.

That leaves Alexandra or JLS. For some reason, I can’t warm to Alexandra. She’s got an undeniably good voice, but it just doesn’t work for me - and she just has too much to say for herself for my liking. JLS have not got the greatest voices in the world, but I’d love to see a group win the X Factor, and they’re the first one that have shown any glimmer of being worthy of it. They’ve also got a great chemistry, and I like the fact that they’re in a group together because they’re friends - not because they’ve been packaged and manufactured into a foursome for the sake of it. Their camaraderie, and the sense that they’re genuinely having fun performing together, is very reminiscent of post-reunion Take That - which can only be a good thing. JLS will be getting my vote tonight.

An inevitable whinge

I’m afraid you’ve not escaped the saga of the leaky ceiling. Following the leak debacle a couple of weeks ago, when water started leaking from the currently unoccupied flat above mine, resulting in various frantic phone calls to my building maintenance company, the company that I think I am insured with (paperwork and record keeping is not my strong point), the police (yes, really), and a friend of a friend who owned a crowbar and seemed fairly keen to come round and use it, I now have a stain on my bathroom ceiling. It’s not a big stain, or a very obvious stain, but I know it’s there - and the point is, it wasn’t there two weeks ago before the slightly dodgy builder/decorator working on the flat upstairs “didn’t tighten the nut enough”.

After lots of phone calls and an emergency visit from my Dad to hold the fort while I had to go to work, in scenes reminiscent of the oven fiasco a few years ago when I first left home (I love having retired parents, and as he rightly said, “That’s what Dads are for”), it was agreed that the offending builder himself would come and repaint the ceiling once it had dried out. This was arranged for 9 o’clock this morning - I have a day‘s holiday, which I wouldn‘t have chosen to spend waiting in for someone to paint my ceiling, but needs must and all that. Being like I am about timekeeping (i.e. absolutely militant), I was starting to feel irritated by about three minutes past nine when he hadn’t showed up, so you can imagine my annoyance when it got to 9.40, and I was on the phone to the maintenance company again, telling them in no uncertain terms that they needed to pass it over to the owners of the flat to deal with. I then felt slightly stupid having to call them back five minutes later when he arrived.

He’s now been in and put a layer of gloss over the stain, and is coming back at 3 p.m. to finish the job. The glossing took him about 30 seconds, so I am wondering what on earth he’s doing upstairs as he seems to have been working there for about a month, and it’s only a two bedroom flat. The only sign of anything happening is a few bags of rubble and a sink pedestal which are currently making the place look untidy outside the front door of the block. As you can probably imagine, that’s irritating me too. I’ve got visions of Flat 5 being like the Palace of Versailles inside when he’s finished - although admittedly he doesn’t look capable of creating anything along those lines. All he’s done in my bathroom, aside from the glossing, is leave a very strong smell of stale cigarettes. I’ve been marching round the flat with a can of Glade, but I think I may have to go and buy a plug in.

A little self-indulgence

If you’d asked me a few years ago, I never would have said I’d be blogging. As the title suggests, I’ve always thought of having a blog as being slightly self-indulgent, not to mention a little presumptuous to think that people will actually be interested in reading what you have to say. But since reading and enjoying (admittedly not always for the right reasons!) other people’s blogs, I’ve decided the time is right to indulge myself. If you read and enjoy it, that’s a bonus - my main objective is to entertain myself with an outlet for all sorts of stuff. And maybe I’ll entertain someone else into the bargain.

So, what will you find here? I’m not entirely sure of that myself. I can certainly tell you what you won’t find. You won’t find the minutiae of my daily life - this is not an online diary. I think I’d bore myself rigid with that, let alone anyone else. You also won’t find a themed blog - it’s not going to be about cooking/rock climbing/bee keeping/stamp collecting/[insert appropriate ‘hobby’ here]. That would be a struggle, as I am not a hobbies person. I always dread being asked - usually in job interviews - what my hobbies are. Unless you’re into some kind of extreme sport or you collect something unusual, you always end up sounding incredibly boring. “I like going out with my friends” - well, so does everyone, unless you don’t actually have any friends. “I like socialising” sounds slightly more grown up, but there’s a danger of sounding like an alcoholic (or perhaps that’s just my paranoia). In the end I normally mutter something about “the usual stuff” and leave it at that. I was amused recently when I went on a training course and we had to all introduce ourselves, along with some interesting facts about us. People went through all the usual things, and a few more unusual hobbies and facts came out too, then one delegate stood up, introduced himself and then said: “And there is absolutely nothing interesting to say about me,” before sitting back down. Needless to say, it’s the only introduction I actually remember!

Anyway, I digress. I think that may happen a lot, so prepare yourself. Of course, I have the occasional day dream about writing one of those blogs that becomes famous - like Belle du Jour (before she was Billie Piper) and that woman whose name escapes me who was single and had sex like a man, or something - or am I getting confused with Carrie Bradshaw? In reality, that’s highly unlikely because to write something along those lines that was actually interesting, firstly I’d probably have to make it all up, and secondly, even if it was true, I wouldn’t want to broadcast it in my blog!

I think what I plan to put here are my observations on all sorts of aspects of life. It could be a rant about something that’s happened, or musings about the events of my day. Had I had the blog a week ago, I’m fairly sure you might have been treated to a whinge about my leaky bathroom ceiling, for example. So, you can only be glad I started this week and not last! If I’m feeling particularly uncultured, it could be my thoughts on my current reality TV favourite. Reality TV is one of my not-so-guilty pleasures. I like X Factor , America’s Next Top Model and The Apprentice. I do not like Big Brother or Strictly Come Dancing. I might occasionally recommend a book, a film or a recipe and share my thoughts on that. Or I might just start writing and ramble on, peppering my ramblings with the occasional anecdote - as I have done today. I am hoping it will simply take shape, and I will find my own level of what I enjoy writing about. I also hope that it may entertain you, perhaps make you nod in agreement, and even occasionally make you laugh.

I certainly won’t be blogging daily, but I’ll post entries as and when I have something to say. So, what more is there to say for today, than please allow me to indulge myself!