This morning I received a Christmas Newsletter (known in some circles - circles in which I would not like to mix - as a "round robin") from a member of my very own family. To be honest, this is no surprise; they live far away in the bottom of a valley and send one every year. And every year it elicits the same response: I open it and get no more than four lines down without shouting and emailing the other members of my immediate family a choice quote under the subject title "Those Fucking Cunts".
This year's choice quote was "Already in award-winning form for debating for University and individually", a sentence that doesn't really make sense, but refers to the many and manifold achievements of my cousin who has also apparently "Enjoyed his Canadian gap year at X College - and got [a] great reference for reinstating cricket". (Reinstating?)
So, just in case you haven't sent your Christmas Cards off because you're struggling with your Newsletter, here are some tips to get you by.
Show off
You are a cock and not that interesting, but don't let that stop you. Every single one of your readers wants to know how your averagely-intelligent and rather plain children are doing at school. They are also interested in how well you organised the last Rotary dinner, and your recent promotion. And whatever you do, please, I beg of you, don't hold off on the details of your holiday: I for one am fascinated and I know everyone else will be too. But most importantly, I really do want to know every single award your 'musically gifted' (Grade 5 at the age of 15, anyone?) child has won, and the details of the every sporting achievement of your 13 year old. (Under-13s North East of England Ping-Pong Champion? Well done, Barnaby!)
Be funny
You are definitely clever and amusing enough to try and subvert the genre, so go right ahead and let me weep with laughter over your attempts at irony (I wanna see those knowing nods to the conventions of the newsletter), that nevertheless still manage - in a subtle way - to communicate the many and manifold achievements of your family. You are still showing off, however carefully you think you are disguising it.
Assume a narrative voice
What? You're saying your dog wrote this?! Fuck me! I've nearly wet my pants laughing!
Omit Key Facts
"Bristol University" is Bristol University. It is not "The University of the West of England, Bristol". In the same way, "she is working for the BBC" is not the same as "she is working on reception of BBC publications in Milton Keynes".
Provide too much information
Yes, I definitely want to know about the tiny steel umbrella you had shoved down your jap's eye, and I also definitely want to know about the anal seepage. Please give me as much information as you can, preferably with photographs. And if there's anything you can tell me about the stitches after the baby, I want to know that too.
Photographs
As many as you can, as come Christmas time I like to be reminded how lucky I am to look like me and not like you.
Send me God's Blessings to Me and Mine
Do this thing because, as you know, the cat and I are definitely practicing Christians.
Mention Modern Stuff In An Inappropriate Way
This is a "non-blog" newsletter, you say?
Think I Care
If you cannot labour under the misapprehension that everyone is fascinated by every detail of your life, you cannot write a newsletter. And with that I say: good luck with your own newsletters, everyone!
Do let me know how you get on.
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17 comments:
Ah but now see, unlike young Penelope making it to the quarter finals in the south-east Aberdeen field hockey league, anal seepage is precisely the kind of news I think would make a newsletter interesting. Maybe it's just me.
Sincerely,
Lionel
This is the greatest blog post of all time. By anyone.
Dave, have you been at the drink? Still, most kind! Do carry on.
J-boy, yes, but not in a showy-offy way, surely? I don't want to have to read the words "squirt" and "all ove the floor" when I'm eating my porridge.
Yours sincerely
Lionel
Do all comments noe have to finish
Yours Sincerely
Lionel????
Sincerely yours
Lionel.
Noe, they don't.
No newsletters sent or received here this year. I knew there was a bright side to Christmas this year.
There's a lovely newsletter game you can play. The rules are here.
I'd just like to make it plain that this saga has nothing whatsoever to do with my side of the family.
Whose side then? I'll ask your Aunt. Families, don't you love 'em?
I loved this post, it is genius. My mum always does one too and insists on reading it out at the Christmas dinner table to collected family to save on postage.
Would you mind if I sent her this to give her some tips?
Corking example of the species "round robin", you have there NWM. The one member of my immediate family (related by marriage, only, I hasten to say that she shares no genes with me) who succumbed to sending these one year is also someone who has as her role models people like Cherie Blair and Jemima Goldsmith. Which may be a statistically significant fact, or no.
A Middle England friend of my parents used to send triumphant round robins at Christmas, and I remember one year when she had to try to make something of her only son becoming a Buddhist monk, shaving his head and going into a five-year silent retreat in Scotland. Yes, gentle reader, in her letter she told everyone of how - as part of her attempt to stop her son taking orange robes - she had sent him to a psychiatrist ...
I like the way monkeypapa's comment follows monkeymama's by just two minutes.
Our family doesn't do it, but my husband has a uni friend whose wife does it. Ghastly woman, who one year trumpeted that the husband had managed to buy a personalised number plate that year from poor sod he was interviewing to tell him that he was being made redundant! We used to read them out while dying from laughter, a bit like a sketch from Abigail's Party.
This is just one of the numerous reasons I do not do extended family...*shudder*
I find that people tend to go through the Round Robin phase, generally when they have reproduced and one of them is spending far too much time at home trying not to go completely mental through lack of adult conversation. The letters tail off when they're back at work and/or the offspring are old enough to protest at writing their own thank you letters. This rule of thumb does not apply to citizens of the US.
inspired stuff. and if you can be inspired by family newsletters...
A friend of my mother's - well, the god-bothering idiot husband of a friend of my mother's - has been sending us one of these wretched things since the '70s. We occasionally considered sending them one back detailing our tremendous successes in such fields as heroin addiction, violent crime and being thrown in a Bangkok gaol, but we never actually got round to doing it. Perhaps you could adopt this idea?
Anonymouses, (mousses? better, and funnier), I wish you were all Different. Can the first person be Anonymous, and then the next anonymous person be Anonymous 2? I think you may live together in an Anonymous House in an Anonymous Town. That is fine, but I believe you are separate anonymous entities, whether you choose to remain anonymous or not.
And now my head hurts.
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