Round Robin Newsletters

This year, we sent the concoction below to selected friends:

Well, it’s that time of the year again folks!
Our year began with the news that Alan’s great aunt Charlotte, a silver surfer if ever there was one, had placed an ad on the Hearts R Us website, the success of which was something of a suprise to us all, as Rodney was forty years her junior. An even bigger surprise, a month later, was that Rodney’s other partner, Claude, had also moved in. All three live happily together, doing their bit for the planet by growing their own brand of herbal tobacco in the loft. Aunt Charlotte writes that she occasionally sprinkles some of it on her scones and says they’re very nice. She’s planning to send us a home made Christmas cake this year so we may manage to sample some too.
Meanwhile, Catherine’s cousin Vladek, from Romania, reports that he has moved into a new home, a derelict castle, which he plans to renovate over the next few years. A Place in the Country indeed! This is very exciting news, especially since he also tells us that he is determined to visit us here in the UK. He says he’d love to experience the night life in Scotland, and – what an enterprising young man he is – is making his way to the Baltic coast, from where he plans to sail to Whitby. Why Whitby, you ask? We don’t know, except that he seems to have discovered a link with a great great great grandfather – the joys of genealogy, eh? We’ll let you know when he arrives. We’ve never met Vladek, but he posted some pics on Facebook– he looks like a very handsome young man, so he’ll probably break a few hearts when he’s here!
Aunty Alice, that’s the lady from Pendle we told you about last year, for those of you who haven’t ever met her, reports that she has been enjoying her new evening classes and is about to graduate from necromancy to summoning demons. What fun!!!
This was the year that our great nephew Franklin – that’s the boy who was admitted to Miss Smither’s alternative academy for really really gifted children at the age of three (a record we believe) - graduated from Edinburgh University with a first class BSc Honours degree in Nuclear Physics at the tender age of eleven. His tutors admitted that they had never encountered anything quite like him although, sadly, his advanced male pattern baldness continues to trouble him. All gifts of woolly hats gratefully received!
Franklin’s cousin, Madonna Jordan, has won the Miss Teeny Tiny Jam Tarty Pageant in Texas for the third year running. She has a bedroom absolutely stuffed with trophies. Her mother, Balenciaga, tells us that she is thrilled with her daughter, whose special talent involves twirling a vast number of fiery batons around her head. She practises in the front garden of their wee house in Nitshill, attracting a great deal of attention, most of it very welcome!
Alan is still recovering from those five operations on his finger. He finds to his astonishment that he can now play the piano, and has already received an invitation to play at Carnegie Hall next year. Book your tickets soon because a full house is expected. We only wonder what else he will discover that he is able to do in 2010!
Best wishes to everyone for a Merry Christmas, and a Happy (and funny) New Year
Catherine, Alan and Charles.
PS The five operations really happened!!!!

So far, so funny.
But you want to know the really funny (or should that be worrying?) thing? It was just how many people - men, they were all men - read it as far as Franklin and beyond - and took it seriously. Even the graduation at 11 didn't phase them, and evening classes in Necromancy must be perfectly acceptable in some quarters. It was only Madonna Jordan and her fiery batons that made them suspect the spoof. Well, that or the fact that their wives read it too, and pointed out the joke...

1 comment:

margaret blake said...

Very funny, Catherine! I had a good laugh on a gloomy day, so thank you very much.