Danskcolin: Monday December 23rd 2024 "Are YOU having your mail redirected this Christmas? Most of us are, aren't we!"

Dear Reader, are YOU having all your mail redirected this Christmas? Most of us, aren't we!

And even if not, almost all of us have done it at one time or another, haven't we, some as recently as yesterday, by the old "law of averages", originally passed into law by Parliament in 1216 and still not repealed yet, which is totally crazy, incidentally!!!! Let me tell you, it's a wise precaution to have your mail redirected, particularly if you're ever moving house - and if you forget to do it, it can cause a lot of annoyance to your old house's new owners, that's for sure.

Do you remember all the furore when George W Bush took over from Bill Clinton in 2001? It was in the Daily Mail, of course, but also even in Onion News's print edition back-pages? Does this strike a chord?

Just a one-off, likely to be remedied soon, we all thought at the time. But apparently not, and it's been made abundantly clear over the last 23 years that this is a problem that just isn't going away, and if anything is getting worse. Did you see these headlines over the years?

It's a problem that my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I are tackling head-on today, and I quickly get online this morning to pay for a year's mail redirection by Royal Mail.

We're moving soon from Malvern, Worcestershire to Liphook, Hampshire. We're both 78 now, and, doctors claim, "clinically old" (it's "official"!!!), so we want to be nearer to our daughter Alison and family in nearby Headley.

flashback to last Christmas: me and my medium-to-long-suffering

wife Lois, examined recently by doctors and found to be "clinically old"

The move, which, "in a fit of madness" we originally planned for December 27th, has now been put back to January 2nd (probably!), so today, I arrange for our mail to be redirected, and our current doorstep milk deliveries stopped, from that date.

our planned move from Malvern, Worcestershire to this house

in Liphook, Hampshire to be nearer our daughter Alison and family

So, let me see..... (1) mail redirected, (2) milk deliveries stopped - I think that about wraps it up - job done!!!!!

(1) mail redirected and (2) milk deliveries stopped

- "job done", or IS it !!!!!!

Oh, wait, that is, "job done", apart from telling, like, a billion other people - more, probably! - that we don't want their gas, electricity, water, council services and a billion other services any more (!). Which will be difficult because most of them have now "shut down" for the holidays.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

It's a pity but this year is the Christmas with the least "Christmassy" feel to it ever, because of all this house-move madness. I said to Lois, we must try not to move house next Christmas, if we can avoid it, to put it mildly!

The only other un-Christmassy year I can remember was the one I experienced in Tokyo in 1970 during my student year, when I discovered that December 25th was just another working day over there. I celebrated with a Yuletide drink in a bar with Kathy, one of my American student friends. Lois and I would like to do that this year, but the pubs are all going to be closed, needless to say. What madness!

flashback to 1970-1: me, as a student in Tokyo,

with one of my American friends, Kathy, from Spokane WA

We'll be doing our best to celebrate, although Lois and I are going to be all on our own, for the first Christmas like that since 2014 (?).

Lois and I all on our own this Christmas for the first time in 10 years

- sob sob!!!!

Poor us !!!!!!

Plus, our older daughter Alison and family are skiing in Austria, while our younger daughter Sarah and family are busy making Christmas wreaths and decorating their tree 9000 miles away in Perth, Australia.

Our daughter Alison with husband Ed and their 3 teenage offspring

Josie (18), Rosalind (16) and Isaac (14) currently on a skiing holiday in Austria

our twin granddaughters 9000 miles away in Perth, Australia, busy getting ready

for Christmas making wreaths and Christmas stockings for Santa - awwww!!!

And poor us (again) !!!!!!

Don't worry about Lois and me, though. We know how to celebrate in our own special way, you would not believe, so watch this space !!!!!

20:00 We wind down for bed with the last ever episode of 'Allo 'Allo, the sitcom centring on the adventures of French café-owner René Artois in German-occupied France during World War II.

The last episode ever - finally! And sometimes it seemed that the series was longer-running than the original war it was meant to depict, and it actually was, in fact - the series ran from 1984 to 1992, so quite punishing in itself at times, often inventive, but often, also, milking those famous catch-phrases a bit too much, arguably, to put it mildly (!). Not that I would ever do that haha!

René opens this episode, as with the other like, billion, episodes, with one of his trademark "the story so far" monologues-to-camera.