Annual Round Robin

It was with real delight and zeal in opening the Christmas card I realised it contained the annual round robin. It is from my cousin and his wife, which makes it actually written by his wife. That is how these things usually work, but not always as my Mr Doris has on occasion written them. We have written such things in the past but I'd like to think we wrote them with a different style and acknowledging that it was impersonal and then tried to make it as personable and friendly as possibly. We did them using web pages, thus saving on paper, and included photographs. It was never a catalogue of achievements nor just a diatribe of saccharine.

The latest offering from my cousins did not disappoint and launched right in as to where each of the family including the adult members are up to in their highly successful studies. We get the grades and the successes. The kids are young women and I wonder what they think of their parent's cloying newsletters boasting and bragging. Each sentence fits the cliche of the Round Robin Christmas Letter and I wonder if these people do not even glance at the media and the backlash. Today's BBC Magazine has an amusing item to join all the others online. The latest one page A4 printout using a Word layout on 80gsm photocopy paper even contains grainy photographs of them at their best Olympic seats this year.

It is not that I do not want people to share their achievements and to feel good about them, just that if one has a page of monologued super achievements topped off with them looking forward to another action packed year then I am left chuckling and cheered up by the humour of it all. It is surely meant to be humorous, isn't it?

We used to regularly receive another Round Robin from some friends that went over several pages and was a catalogue of exciting places they holidayed to in just that year. I read these travelogues with huge jealousy as we were facing financial crisis year after year. Then one year it stopped and soon after we heard they had separated and divorced. All that glitters is not gold so why pretend it is.