Round Robins. Love 'em or Hate 'em?

We get them also , to be truthful I find them most of the boring , especially when you haven"t seen the people for ages .

Unless they're sent to relatives who like to be kept up to date, I do think most some Round Robins are breathtakingly arrogant. People actually photocopy them and shove them in with all their Christmas cards, even if you only met them once on holiday 20 years ago....

I got one today. Peppered with pretentious information designed for oneupmanship. As it goes to several different familes, I assume they're not trying to impress me

It depends on the quality of the writing. A well-written letter is always worth receiving. Bit like blogs, really.

I enjoy receiving them and send one out, although selectively to family and friends who I know are interested. I do get a few of the self congratulatary ones, which are tedious. I hope mine arent. My father was one of oldest of 11 children so I do have a lot of family members from several generations spread around the country, since the aunt who used to be the source of all family information died these round robins are the best way to get news around the family

I get a few. In the past a friend used to send a 'boasting' round robin, all about how wonderful her children were and how successful they were in school etc etc. She also used to put down things like 'Erica and Tony paid us a visit' - who the hell were they?
Another friend sends a robin about their activites through the year, new babies and whose reached 90 years old.However, she does tell us that they have had such and such problem but 'God' spoke to them and all their troubles were resolved.
In the US we got similar cards with a Xmas family photo too. Must have cost a fortune.

I have just printed 20 to send to relatives overseas/ friends who have moved further afield/ old friends from school/uni who would love to see more of but circumstances prevent. I include lots of pics of us & grandkids with captions of what we have been up to! I find it odd to get cards from people I have not seen that just have a signature & no message!

Travelogues from friends and relatives are irritating, especially the ones with photographs taken in exotic locations. I'm sure they are intended to make the recipients envious! Almost as bad is a catalogue of ailments, quite an easy trap to fall into at my age. If you have no good news, don't bother writing a Christmas letter!

So:

Criticism for telling of family successes
Criticism for telling of travels
Criticism for telling of mihaps/ailments

No appreciation for the effort of writing and posting just to try and keep in touch.

Charming, aren't we?

No Bags criticism for being rather snooty. Success and travels are great to hear about (see the appreciation of Greatnan's lovely travel blogettes), and an email replied to when I have made the effort would be nice, or even an enquiry after my wellbeing after losing my sister would be thoughtful, but a round robin telling me that the new driveway paving blocks cost £10,000, and the new baby is just soooo beautiful that she is bound to win a competition they have entered her in just pisses me off when they know damn well that this time last year my beautiful grandchildren were in incubators in intensive care.......and relax

Not real friends then, when . In which case, I wonder why they bother. I'd be inclined to stop being in touch with such then, with any luck, the annoying round robins will fizzle out.

But most round robins aren't that annoying, are they? speaking just for myself.... no.

Not friends, Bags family!! Unfortunately, they are always included for weddings, funerals and suchlike, but when it comes to keeping in touch, we cousins get put on the pretentious round robin list that is clearly intended for people who are impressed by such nonsense . Silly people!

Paper aeroplane. Bin. Aim. Fire.

You don't even have to read it first.

I quite enjoy round robins, after all if they annoy me I can chunter about them to DH, but I enjoy hearing about friends' lives. I have found that most people of our age have also had their crosses to bear along the way and are not quite so into the bragging any more.

Having said that, I don't send round robins but prefer to write the bits that I think will interest people on the inside of the card - some people want to hear about children and grandchildren while others will only want to hear about us.

I love nearly all the ones I get as they tell me about the lives of friends I may not have seen during the year. As my names suggests, I have lived in many places so don't always get to see some old friends and I love to hear what they have been doing. I don't think I get any boasting ones, perhaps I have dropped such people over the years. Only one I find a little bit tedious and that is the one which gives details of every weekend away and every party attended!

We send one to selected people who we feel will be interested but it is pretty factual with things like births, new jobs etc and this year to say our health is good although previous years have told about health problems.

I quite like them, but I was really pi**ed off last to get one from people we really don't see any more, purporting to come from one of their (screamingly over achieving children) which began:

Mummy and Daddy are so busy this year, what with Daddy's new job at the European parliament and Mummy getting her headship and second Masters, that they've asked me to write this year.

Quadruple yuk.

We used to get one that had our children in stiches. It was dreadful really as this woman would include the most intimate details about her family and their emotional crises. It was also full of boasting about how brilliant her children were.

An annual treat was when my children would stand up and do a spoof of these letters...."You will be thrilled to hear that Jane has her first bra etc...!"

It is however nice to catch up with news from some people who are not so nauseatingly perfect and are genuine friends.

MiceElf, that one takes the fbiscuit!

MiceElf [yuk emoticon]
Generally I dislike them for all of the above reasons, but I agree with Bags that if they are well-written they are good to read, like any other letter.
We receive one from some Australians whom we haven't seen for years that is brilliantly written and full of self-deprecating humour.
Sadly I can't equal them so just write a little message inside the card, appropriate to the recipient.
I got a card from my 90 year-old godfather yesterday, wishing us well on our forthcoming trip to the States on the QM2.
It was a postcard of Shipwreck at Sea, the famous painting of Grace Darling rowing through turbulent seas with her father to rescue shipwrecked sailors off the wild Northumberland coast

In one of Deric Longdons book his wife sent out a very funny totally spoof round robin with all sorts of outrageous things in it, at least one of the recipients thought it was all true.

Of course, you could always try one like this:

Hi everyone, sorry it's been so long since I was here, but, phew! what a busy time I have had!

It all started when dp gave me an early prezzie. You know that thing where you can have a star named after someone? Well of course that wasn't enough for dp! he whisked me off in the space shuttle to actually go & see it! I must say that solved a mystery, I thought he'd been working late advising Tony (& of course dear Cherie!) about the legal implications of intervening in the Middle East peace talks, but no! He'd been secretly training to fly the shuttle, which of course he did brilliantly. It was so romantic, just the two of us up there in space, although he did bring along Paul Burrell (you remember him, butler to the late dear Diana, serves a brilliant champagne cocktail, but a little familiar for my taste)to serve the nibbles.

That of course was only the start! We then went to the Guerlain perfume house, as DP had read something in the paper about having an exclusive perfume designed based on your personality, a bargain at £20k. I must say, the one thay came up with was soooooo me! A base note of old flannel, a mere hint of waffle finished with a top note of merde de bull. (The tanker of it should arrive next week)

Of course, as you can imagine, I was a tad worried about the children, but of course dp had it all in hand. He'd got Gina Ford & that super nanny woman working in shifts, although I can't imagine that they would have had much to do, as ds & dd were planning to spend Christmas working on their proposals to solve the world energy/global warming problem before writing their thank you letters. (so nice for them to have something to bond over, don't you think?)

The other advantage with us being out of the way for a while was it gave the Harrods window dressing team time to finish off the decorations around the house. It did look nice, but I was forever on at those 2 nice women from "How Clean is Your House" to get the diamond fairy dust out of the corners.

My other worry was the catering, but luckily dp had been having coffee with David Attenborough the other week, who had let slip that he knew where the last breeding pair of dodos were to be found, so problem solved! Of course Gordon's (need I be more specific? )language reached new peaks when presented with them, but with dear Jamie in charge of veg. & good old reliable Delia in charge of all things sweet it all went swimmingly.

After a delicious lunch (I must say Ainsley did marvels with the washing up) we all settled back to relax & enjoy ourselves. I thought Elton sounded a tad tired, but Robbie was his usual exuberant self, bless him. David Blaine did a few tricks to amuse the younger members of the gathering (of course all of dp's many brothers brought their children, except for the gay ones, brothers that is, not children). Billy's jokes were quite funny, even though the older members of the family did need subtitles for the Glasgow accent.

Anyway, must go as I've got Stella coming round to do another fitting on my dress for David & Victorias New Years Eve bash. She spent Christmas with her father, but feels the need of a bit of a break away from all the accountants tring to work out the divorce settlement, poor lamb. I'm sure I've left loads out, but promise to come back as I remember things!

Love to all!

My favourite one, which I'd miss if it didn't arrive, is often written as a poem by a very talented family friend, and often more about her surroundings in the Highlands than anything else.