Premature felicitations ....

Christmas letters - you have to admire the sheer artistry, exaggeration and mangling of the language that goes into them.

Here's one I received yesterday, from second cousin Betty in England. Only the names have been changed, to protect the extremely tedious innocent....

'Dear Family,

2013 has been a year filled with simple pleasures.

January found us in the Bahamas again. Oswald's ingrown toenail necessitated another trip to hospital, to have the pus drained out (see photo number 6#a) but as you can tell from the attached Venn diagram, the poison didn't quite reach his nose this time. As his world renowned surgeon said, a septic septum is not to be sneezed at....

February was very exciting. Whilst Marcus was in Brighton at the Gay Pride March (photos 22-76a) (he's rampantly hetero of course - he always says he just likes to give his friend Adrian 'a hand'), his lhasa apso (best of breed at Crufts this year) literally endangered her life, by running into the sea to save Paul Daniels' toupee when a rogue gust lifted it off his head, just as he and Debbie McGee were about to go shopping in Lidl. (Marcus caught up with them in the frozen fish aisle, once he'd wrested the hairpiece from the dog's mouth....apparently she was flinging it about like a dead rat. Anyway, Marcus couldn't resist taking a peek into Paul's trolley....would you believe, it was full to the brim with squirty cream, masking tape and frozen sausages. No wonder Debbie always looks mildly surprised.... )

The summer was very quiet, apart from going to Wimbledon with Judy and Andy of course. It was a frightful bore, but he's so grateful to me after the incident with the fish slice and the lap dancer (see Appendix 8 in last year's letter)....

Autumn brought us The Christening. Modesty (and MI6) prevents me from saying whose it was, but put it this way - Chicken Balmoral and Queen of Puddings were both on the menu, by George!!!

Apart from that, nothing much happened - Lucinda was the star of the under-tens dance show this year. Her teacher was overheard saying that my beautiful daughter is 'full of tap'. (At least I think that's what she said.) Gerald is still in Thailand - staying at the Bangkok Hilton of all places! And Miles keeps coming home covered in flour, from yet another baking lesson with Nigella.

Much love......'