Keeping in touch

        

At the risk of sounding like Brigit  Jones, here is the review of last week: Walks: 0, yoga sessions: 0, Bookkeeping: moved from table to big box behind the sofa. Summary: must do better. Whichever way, the accounts from last year are finally submitted, New year cards ( haven’t called them Christmas cards for years) finally finished and a very enjoyable staff Christmas party finally had. You get the trend? We are late for most things but have ceased to stress about those that don’t matter. Accounts could have gone in earlier but the staff do was as much fun yesterday as it would have been any other day and probably more so than in the reasonably busy time leading up to Christmas where hundreds of mince pies needed to be made and where everyone is busy with their own private run up to Christmas and who really minds whether the card arrives in December or January? 

Greeting cards at Christmas time are probably our last bastion of written communications. In a world of quick emails and texts, this one may well be the only opportunity to go through that address book and remember people that might have fallen out of our busy lives, people that we’d like to get back in touch with. In our family it is has been tradition for many years to send a picture of the children and write a card, summarizing the year in general and our year in particular.  We keep in touch, we add a personal note to the card and we follow up with lunch dates, weekend invites and the general feeling that we are keeping family and friends in some kind of fold. And of course we get other cards from people who do the same thing – but generally get around to it a little bit earlier. 

As life gets busier and busier, keeping in touch is so important and it feels great to stick those stamps on over 50 envelopes and send our good wishes into the world. It feels even greater that it is Monday morning at 7 0’clock and that I smell the breakfast that someone else is cooking and that the school uniform is being ironed by someone else too. Today is obviously the day for that box behind the sofa to be dealt with and for that elusive walking programme to start.