The day of love

It is terribly bad luck that Lent begins on Valentines Day.  It is the death knell to every abstemious vow that involved chocolate and probably several other things that are perhaps best not speculated about . . .

Ash Wednesday seems a dive of a day by comparison with its romantic counterpart.  Who'd ever give an Ash Wednesday Card?

Try this.

It's not going to revive the flagging High Street retail sector, is it?

Yet of course the two days are linked by more than a calendar coincidence.  They are linked by love.  The Valentine love that overwhelms but can never last and the other a Calvary love that died but can never die.

Christmas Card Mysteries: No 3

We've received a card with a quite alarming warning on the back.

You may think that at my age I should take such a warning in my stride and not worry about it.  But what worried me about it was that for the life of me I couldn't see how a Christmas Card warranted this health and safety warning.  Like most people (I like to think) I find 'contains nuts' warnings on packets of nuts a form of corporate insanity but at least I know that nuts are dangerous to some people.  But a card - not a toy, contains small parts  . . .????

Here's the card:

Eventually I solved the mystery.  The offending small part is the little red and white ribbon at the top left - the one you'd have swallowed as a 2 year old thinking it was a toy . . .

Inevitably I studied the picture to check that health and safety had been properly respected throughout the product.

Ah, there are two stockings above a live flame.  Paper wrapped presents where the sparks may fly on the hearth.  Electric lights where ones hands should hold the banister.  Presents on the stairs and a pile of them at the foot of the stairs. Filled glasses of plonk on the narrow mantelpiece above the fire.  The tree too near the fire.

That ribbon is just about the safest thing on the card!  

  

Card

Today the first Christmas Card arrived! All the way from . . . .

. . . the Royal Mail.

We are blessed by many cards usually. I like to look at cards for at least one interesting or ridiculous thing and the Royal Mail card does not disappoint.

It has 'Merry Christmas' on it! This is something of a welcome surprise given the secularisation of such things. This is devalued upon opening it and realising that it is the announcement of Christmas postal arrangements dressed up in the form of a card.

It also has, on this symbol on,

Which is very confusing indeed. After all, if I recycle it now I will not have the card in Advent, let alone at Christmas. And if I recycle it now I will also lose all the information which it has been sent to convey.

This card is already a front-runner for my 'Most Contradictory Card Award 2009'