Writing Letters

I was tidying up my Christmas cards last week. They are getting fewer as time goes on and more people communicate with me via WhatsApp. Some friends still write me a Christmas letter and I really enjoy this. It is so rare to get a handwritten letter these days. To be honest, as my writing has deteriorated in direct relation to how often I use my laptop, my friends all get a typed letter from me. I would be ashamed to inflict my scrawl on them. I used to have nice handwriting though.

I am old enough to remember letters as the usual way of communicating, especially if you lived abroad as I did. Phone calls were expensive so only made in emergencies usually. I know that I wrote to my siblings once a month, filling at least four sheets of A4 with my handwritten news. It would take me over an hour to get everything down in a legible hand. I remember, too, what fun it was to receive letters from family and friends. I would usually wait until I had a quiet time in the day to read them. I'd make myself a cup of tea and take my time over each letter. Some of my correspondents were better at communicating than others, of course, although all letters were very welcome.

Looking back, I have to ask myself: what did we write about? Did we have more fun in those days, more things to communicate? The kids were small,of course, and a lot of news centered around them and their progress. We wrote to each other about places we'd visited, about people who had visited us and about our return visits to them. We added snippets of news about politics or the latest scandals. We always seemed to have something to say and we took the time to write it.

Clicking on an email is no substitute for the pleasure of receiving an envelope with your name and address on it and the certainty that the letter it contains will entertain you as no perusal of Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram can - despite the photos which you can click through at leisure.

New Year Resolutions and All That. A not quite serious look at New Year Plans

Reading the Sunday newspapers last weekend, I was amazed and amused at all the advice and baring of souls the Lifestyle sections contained. Talk about over-sharing! It is bad enough that we are forever being given tips on how to manage Christmas as if it were some infectious disease instead of a happy holiday time. Mind you, with all the over-eating and alcohol consumption, it could be considered a health hazard. I always want to shout: take it easy, have soup and sandwiches, play board games with the family and maybe - weather permitting - take a leisurely walk before sitting down to tea and Christmas cake. Ban mobiles for the day and get everybody talking if they haven't already started while playing Monopoly or Scrabble or whatever your fancy is. That lost art, conversation, is better than anything on the television. Everyone will find it so much more fun once they get used to the idea of talking to each other.
But to return to my topic, we have stars and celebs giving us their take on what they did wrong and how they are going to fix it in 2020.
Before we make out that list of getting up at 5 a.m. to go running, doing an hour's yoga (Namaste!), nibbling on a lettuce leaf, let's just stop here and ask ourselves the all important question: are you happy with you (despite all your faults and not looking like the latest fashion icon, are you happy with the you of you, in other words)? I would say, you are just fine. Yeah, maybe you put on a pound or two over Christmas, or you were rude to Aunty Beth or told the people next door that you all had flu so you couldn't go to their you-knew-it-would-be-deadly-boring bash. That's what being human is all about. You don't have to share it with the whole world. You can tell yourself that you'll try and do better, be more tolerant, use less plastic, take the bus to work. That's all good, but it doesn't mean that you have made a mess of things. It just means that, like the rest of us, you are human.
I have also seen lists which give ten ways to improve your life.  Abraham Lincoln said something like "folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be". That is the glass half full, half empty idea. It isn't easy with all the social media cant that is out there. I mean, who came up with the expression "imposter syndrome"? That's just trying to scare people who are doing their best.
New Year resolutions? I haven't made any in years. I used to, mind you. I tried giving up cigarettes a lot of times and one year even made it to April when a colleague brought me duty-frees and I thought what a shame to waste them. (I did finally give up smoking but not at NewYear). Alcohol-free January? No thanks.
The golden maxim is everything in moderation: work, play, food, alcohol, shopping. Life is for living. There are no repeats.
Have a great 2020 everyone!