Round Robin, anyone?

Thankfully, none of our friends/family sent RR with their cards this year, no doubt because so many of our friends are Guardian readers and Simon Hoggarts campaign against RR's must have hit home. (I know, you have to laugh). Yesterday, the one I've been waiting for arrived. Someone has an OBE, a child is working in top secret government department, someone else is a top chef, needs a change of career, but at least the hours mean that person can prioritise golf. Another child is now employed by a Big Firm as a game designer. Everyone is ecstatically happy, successful and important. I know the family well, and like them - if this person had scribbled a note in the card telling us the good news, I'd have rejoiced with them. But - there is something odious about two sides of A4 cramped with, well, what my parents would have called "showing off".

But it wasn"t 50 years ago you last heard from them , was it ?
I still think it weird , cannot stop looking at it !
Chuckle

I just received a card that was all black; fearing the worst I opened it up to see who it was from only to find a white dangly decoration thingy inside it. Phew.

This is not really a RR , but I just had to say this , I have received a card from some-one I have seen or heard from in 50 YES 50 years !
Bizarre or what well that will be topic for the dinner table over Christmas !
I think rather odd , perhaps that is just me !

Apricot
LOL

Dear All,
sorry this is photocopied but it's cheap to do in the library, where I spend every morning. Free newspapers and heat! Then off to Waitrose for my complimentary cup of coffee and a quick look for lunch in the Reduced bins. In the afternoons I do a stint in a charity shop, worth it for first pick of the donations, I sell them on E Bay and make a tidy bit. Here's a tip - wear really scruffy clothes and go to the butcher's or fishmonger's just before closing to ask for "a few scraps for the cat" and you'll get given enough for several dinners (human of course, I haven't got a cat!)
I've had a good year, hooray for the growth in food banks! I've managed to not spend more than £10 any week, a sad necessity if I'm to have my usual cruise and a scant month in the sun. It's tough getting old but I flatter myself it doesn't show, thanks to my excellent surgeon.
All the best for 2014 to my many friends. I'll post this to Ginny, who can then send it to Louise and so on round the old gang. One 2nd class stamp to keep in touch isn't bad, aren't I clever!
PS I need a new loo brush, if anyone's got one they no longer use. Thanks!

We've just had one as an attachment to an emailed card. I do most of the Oz ones via free emails and I actually cried after reading their RR.Two lovely souls who had been £10 Poms I think they were called who made it good down under and are now physically crumbling.it was cheerful regardless of the litany of disintegration and I felt very tearful at the end. They have good families but who left it late to have their own children and now are looking to their retirement with aging parents on one side and a next generation not yet established. The health service in Oz is obviously very good with home support for 12 weeks after an operation. At least they have the sun.

Well, I actually quite like a short note with a little bit of news filling me on on my more distant friends' lives over the past year. However, today I received an e-mail from an old college friend which consisted of eight fat paragraphs and ended with 'I hope this isn't too much of a bragagram......' It is.

RR,,, I hate them.... I have now decided not to read any of them, I do receive about 4 along with the Christmas cards. We rip them up and put them in the bin. DH would love to compose a reply to them all.
Starting with, What a crap year we have had. The hard thing is that these letters come from family. They are so successful, have wonderful jobs, children that are academic. How do you tell them not to send them anymore.

Soutra - I spent the afternoon stocking up for my grandchildren, now in their teens. The stocking up was food, a lot of it, as their home is one of the many affected by the benefit cuts. I'm too upset to do a RR like the one you did for elderly people, but inside I'm raging about the many, many families, where there won't be enough money to put food on the table, never mind exciting Christmas fare.
Rant now over, and I'll add, this is a really good thread and shows Gransnet at its best

We had friends who did this every Christmas. They would tell us all about their wonderful holidays, their genius children and all about their many friends that we'd never heard of, including namedropping.

That's my big worry soutra.

Yepnelliemoser it was meant to be as I feel strongly that it is sadly more illustrative of a true state of affairs. Could be any of us if not yet, maybe in the future.

We can always rely on phoenix to brighten our day with her superb amusing posts (she should be in print) and to Soutra such a fabulous content in both posts.

soutra That last one is sad.

Iam64 . Hope 2014 will be a more cheerful year for you. x

Fablious thread - thanks to Pheonix and Soutra especially for their ace contributions. Fewer RR's arrive with Christmas Cards now, I suspect we can thank Simon Hoggart for this. We have friends who always sent a 2 pager full of the successes they and their children achieved that year. We'd had such a grim year, that as we put the decorations up, and enjoyed a festive sherry, we began composing ours, talking as we worked. It was so full of death, disaster, disease and doom that it cheered us up no end.

You know me so well, dear Soutra.

Soutra, I would weep. I don't think I know anyone in that predicament, but - would they tell me if they were?

What if you received this "round robin" (which would, of course, be handwritten)

Just a little note to my remaining friends this year - you are getting fewer and fewer which saddens me, but with the cost of stamps I am at least saving on my Christmas cards to you all. Life goes on pretty much as before . Dear Arthur would have said we are just plodding along, bless him, how I do miss him especially when it is so cold and I shiver in bed as I really cant afford more than a small hot water bottle. I have kept in reasonable health, apart from the knee replacement which I keep hoping for, but with my asthma and heart problems they keep moving me down from the top of the waiting list. I suppose the doctors know best, but it is hard. They never really explain what they think is best for me, and I feel they talk down to me which is sad as I am not stupid but don't like to tell them I was a Senior Lecturer at St Hilda's before I retired.
The "children" and grandchildren are all well but I rarely see them as they are such busy people. Still I enjoy the postcards from their exotic travels. I had a week in Weymouth as usual this year with my sister, but she has now been diagnosed with Alzheimer's so I suppose that will be the last time. Poor dear Snuggles is getting very frail and I dread the thought of having to call the vet. I find it hard to afford her special diet and treatment but would rather go without myself than see my dear cat suffer. She is such a comfort to me. My neighbours are very kind to me and often pop round but I haven't seen any of them for a couple of weeks so I wonder if they are away for Christmas. I shall be on my own with Snuggles enjoying a small chicken leg which those nice people from Farmfoods have brought me. I shall raise a small glass of sherry to you all and remember happier times past.
Wishing you all the compliments of the season and (DV) a Happy New Year.

phoenix - I'd share it if I could find it....(just seen your wee message of encouragement to divulge all the details )!
However, I can't find it - because DH has chucked it out....heard him muttering, "Load of bl..dy cr.p" as he ripped up what I thought were envelopes. - it was 'S's' round robin.....now consigned to the waste paper recycling bin in the back garden. !

We have acquaintances, not friends, who regularly sent Round Robin letters at Christmas time. A few years ago, the husband who wrote these missives, opened this particular one with the sickening statement "once again our children continue to make us proud to be their parents". At the time our number one son was mid teens and at the height of his horribleness, which peaked at about 18, when he slowly started getting better.

The letter was full of smugness about how his very serene wife had tended lovingly to their vegetable garden, massive amounts of detail of what every season produced and how she had made them self sufficient. Their children, who excelled at everything at school, were home for the holidays having loads of fun making paper chains with their parents, I doubt it, they were mid teens at the time. These paragons of virtue also enjoyed trolling around various museums with their parents on their annual holiday, allegedly finding that fascinating.

A year or so later my husband was in their neck of the woods and called into visit the family. The children weren't there but their school photographs told him that they were on the obese side of chubby! Clearly the home grown vegetables were being supplemented!

The last Round Robin we had the father's tone was a bit sniffy as it seems he had had some negative feed back about his letters, his opening line read something along the lines of "I gather not all of you want to be up dated with an annual letter any more, but I'm continuing with ours anyway", a lengthy up date on garden followed as did a run down of the achievements of their outstanding offspring, how their annual holiday went, what cars they were driving blah, blah, blah!

Happily we don't get them anymore and it wasn't us who commented to them about these letters, even though every time I read them I felt like sending them a text to the effect "in the words of Shakespeare " who gives a s**t!"

We are here in Cheltenham at Tristan and Annabelle's house, and I must say they have already pulled out all the stops for Christmas and for our stay; the swimming pool is at the perfect temperature for me, and the mini fridge in our suite is stocked up with Veuve Cliquot and and a couple of bottles of Sancerre.

Annabell has had her interior designer in, so the guest suite looks stunning, and the new sunken bath does make life easy on the knees. I am so glad that she prefers Molton Brown to L'Occitane toiletries!

After lunch we shall go down to the stables to see their new acquisitions, on doubt passing the garages to see Tristan's latest Maserati. (He is driven up to town to the bank each day, in the Jag., to alleviate his stress.) The boys will be back from their daily hack in readiness for the New Year's meet; dear Marius and Perseus, how well they are doing at Oxford and Eton respectively!

More to come when we are at dear Henrietta's bijou little manor house on the Cornish coast!

Dear Lady Galena,

How I feel for you. Cleggsy's really a pain, isn't he? What an oik, it's amazeballs how he's still there running along after Dave. As for Dave, well, I haven't much to suggest, it's totes necessary to get him some help, and you do seem to know the right people for that. Our sort, I mean, not those waste if spaces in the NHS, I mean, how COULD a poppet like Dave be expected to go on a waiting list, let alone mix with the chavs in the waiting room.

As for Sam, well, my friend Anya has the answer to that. She's just finished her darling little collection of silk and suede pieces - just right for meeting HRH I mean, it wouldn't do to let HRH feel that one hadn't made the most immense effort, even though really, I expect it will be totes boring.

Never mind, the Chipping Norton group have all sorts of really fun things to do - just be careful to remind her and Dave not to leave little Flo in the pub. Totes embarrassing when the oiks in The Guardian get hold of the story.

Anyway, have an amazeballs Christmas and go easy on the Tattinger Psyche x