round robin 2008

Like most of us, I receive a few of those round robin letters, from varied sources including embedded in cards, as letters and also in various electronic formats.

Amongst today's was one which had used photopaper to create a card and included the letter portion as a series of bullet points a la PowerPoint on the inside left.

Sterling work. So to mine, I suppose...

Dear friend,

Its been a truly eventful and groundbreaking year and there are any number of incredible and positive items which I am about to flaunt. You'll be amazed at how we managed to pack so much into this truly award winning year.

After that January domestic bust-up and the little incident with the police, we vowed to turn over a new leaf, but of course kept our fingers crossed. I resorted to staying out until four or five every morning and the rest of the household got an even stronger reputation for being out of control.

That was until the money ran out during the casino vacation in February, but some of the gang helped us out with a loan although they are getting quite nasty now that the money is due.

We did sell the house for a knock down price to recoup part of the debts - in some kind of 'sell to let' scheme so we could still live in it, but I sort of sensed that putting the money into those Northern Rock Hedge Funds was a bad idea. It turns out that the whole thing was a scam in any case so we don't even qualify for compensation.

Luckily we'd already paid for the May safari to South Africa and carried on with it in any case. Amazingly, on the very first day, I was robbed on the way into the hotel but fortunately they missed my camera which I'd already left in a taxi by accident! How we laughed!

The very next evening the taxi driver returned the camera to the hotel and only asked for £200 by way of compensation. So I'm including a few dozen of the more whimsical photographs of wildlife as we toured around. Most of it is at quite a distance but I'm sure you will get the idea.

Whilst we were away, it turned out that the weather in the UK was quite bad, and we returned to see the new tide marks inside the property up to about half a metre. The house sitter had checked in regularly and been feeding Mimsi the cat but somehow all the fish had escaped from the fishtank. Or at least that what we were told. And Mimsi is seeing a pet psychotherapist now because she gets jumpy every time we turn on a tap.

I should mention Pixi-Trix and the recent performance of Armageddon at the local hall. She played Liv Tyler's part of Grace Stamper and we managed to get local man Johnny Depp as the other main star. Although Johnny lives in France, he keeps a small place quite near to us, just around the corner from Kate Moss and the others. Some of the special effects were quite stunning and the drilling of the space rocks to plant the explosive holds a special place in my heart.

Of course, the Guardian gave the show five stars, although the Times was a bit snooty and only gave it a muted review, saying the prawn vol-au-vents were the best thing about the evening. I have a certain pride in being the person that defrosted them.

That takes us neatly to the sporting achievements. As usual, we collected a fair number of cups and trophies from the usual sources; We've a whole cabinet of model yacht racing awards now and Branston continues to win body board trophies and can remove the parole tag from next month. He's already talking about going back to Turkey for another stint on the farm.

And its good news on the medication front too! It appears that the tricyclics were from a quite old prescription and although I'd bought a lot on the cheap from the internet, when they finally ran out the supplier I'd been using had gone out of business. The NHS then suggested something else and the new tablets are supposed to reduce the extrapyramidal side-effects of antipsychotic drugs or something. I know they have cut down on the blurred vision anyway.

But thats enough about us. I hope you are having a similarly interesting time and that these modest achievements don't overshadow those of your own.

Season's Greetings and remember there's always someone worse off than yourself.