It blew a hooley last night, and we had 15mm of rain. We had been planning to go and get the Christmas tree, and collect my plum tree, and perhaps some pots, and another load of mushroom compost, but the Systems Administrator suggested that maybe we could leave the manure until tomorrow, when some of the rain might have drained away. This seemed fair enough, since it is stored in piles outside, and this morning we would probably have been wading around in slurry. Instead I went and posted the Christmas cards.
The post office had run out of Christmas second class stamps. It ran out last year as well, so they ought to order more, or I ought to remember to buy them earlier. We have a choice of three rural post offices. One is a full office able to do car tax discs, but run by someone so glum it is catching, so I tend to avoid going there. The second is fine, except that it can't do tax discs and has limited parking on a busy road. My preferred office is the one that burnt down a few years ago, and now lives incongruously in one corner of a double glazing showroom. The man who runs it has a jaunty air of cheerful defiance, despite the fact that his house and post office burnt down. I suppose it doesn't really matter about the Christmas stamps, as long as the cards arrive. I don't know if I missed the last posting date to Japan. I hope not.
I like Christmas cards. I was talking to a friend who said it had all got too much, and she was cutting back this year. She was still exchanging cards with her late husband's colleagues, who sent sympathetic letters when he died, but that was over nine years ago, and at least one of them lives in Australia, a continent she is not planning on visiting any time soon. I only send cards to people with whom I consider I have an extant social relationship. This includes some relations I don't see very often, and some old friends I would see more of if it weren't for the requirements of careers (theirs), children (ditto), and living a long way apart. I like thinking of people as I write the card, and sometimes even put in a letter, if I haven't seen them for a long while. I like getting their cards back, especially if there is a snippet of news. And it's a mutually face-saving way to try and pick up the threads of connections which have waned for some reason. A natural excuse to make contact, no obligation to respond.
Everyone at the plant centre gives everyone else a card, irrespective of whether we see each other outside work. That's just the custom. It's always been like that. I don't remember the same rule applying in any of my office jobs, where if we exchanged cards I think it was only to home addresses, if we'd developed a private friendship independent of office life. We got a lot of cards from stockbrokers, which had no personal meaning attached, so it was sensible not to add to the pile. And in a large office where would you draw the line?
My instinct is that the music society committee don't send each other cards, except those that are also personal friends, but if I start getting cards from people I haven't sent them to I'll know I got that one wrong. I don't send one to my Pilates teacher, although I've known her for about four years and like her. It wouldn't seem appropriate, unless we started going to art exhibitions or something together and got to know each other outside the context of the lessons, and I don't suppose she wants to send cards to all her pupils. The boatyard sends a card to the Systems Administrator (see stockbrokers, above. On that basis after the saga of the black cat's leg we ought to get one from the vet this year).
We exchange cards with the neighbours, apart from the mystery people at one cottage that nobody knows. The Systems Administrator met the chap once, because the postman mistakenly left us a parcel addressed to him, and the SA took it round, but he just said that he'd been expecting that, and the acquaintance did not flourish. In the past year one of the neighbours has organised bank holiday drinks a couple of times, and we all went, except me when I'd already agreed to work that day, and the people from next door (200m away) when they were in London one time, and the mystery cottage people. The desire for privacy versus the competing desire that someone will notice if your house is on fire or your heating oil is being syphoned off, competition over buying up odd bits of land, delivery drivers who can't find your house and always ask at the house at the end of the lane, the question of how well you have to know somebody before you can reasonably ask them to feed your cats and look after your chickens and water all your pots for a week. It's not necessarily a straightforward relationship.
The Systems Administrator does not send cards, except to me on my birthday. This news will not come as a painful shock to the SA's family, if they are reading this, as they must be aware that it has been my handwriting on all the Christmas cards we've sent to them for the past twenty-plus years. Many couples have the same arrangement. Early in our relationship I did try suggesting that the SA take on this task, and all that happened was that they didn't get cards that year. The SA thought they wouldn't notice, but they did.
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