Almost post-Christmas thoughts!

Well, that's Christmas Day over and done with for another year. I had prepared copious amounts of food and then our daughter turned up with even more items to add to the groaning board. Everyone did sterling work in trying to demolish the lot. Needless to say, a lot of turkey and ham sandwiches will need to be eaten over the next few days. 

Today we have had our grandson deposited with us while his mother goes shopping - yes, shopping! He is not feeling well: snotty nose, sore throat and a raging temperature. Not the result of overindulgence yesterday! 

I am seeing lots of adverts for the sales which are starting today. Masses of people will be heading for the shops to exchange stuff they received for stuff they really want or stuff in the right size and colour. Amazingly, the items of clothing I purchased for the grandchildren appeared to be well received. Two of them even put the items on at once and wore the, all day. To give our daughter her due, she is only shopping because she has been too busy to buy a present for her brother, who arrives tomorrow with his little family. 

We are in a minor flurry of activity, making sure that the bedroom where the small person will sleep is properly sorted out and that other parts of the house are proofed against a crawler / almost cruiser-round-the-furniture. 

This year we only had one card which contained a dreaded round robin. I just googled "round robin" to see if I could find out why it is so called. I found lots of references to letters sent out in Christmas cards, all-play-all sports tournaments and letters that are sent round a group of people with each adding a comment as it progresses. I quite like that one. The one I like best is the protest letter with signatures arranged in a circle at the bottom so that there is no way of telling who signed first and that person being punished as the instigator. However, I found no kind of etymology. 

Anyway, back to my round robin letter. Because I am quite fond of the sender, it was fairly interesting, despite the references to grandchildren I have never heard of. This was perhaps because I didn't read previous years' round robins with due care and attention. At one point my friend wrote about her daughter's wedding. They had worked hard to dissuade her from going to the church in a open carriage, which was just as well since it poured with rain. They did not manage to put her off the idea of wild flowers in jam jars and milk bottles on the tables at the reception. Their florist quite agreed with the bride and the wild flower decor went ahead. I wonder if it was any cheaper that way or if they had specially grown hot-house wild flowers, if that's not a contradiction in terms. 

I mention the jam jar / milk bottle vases because the other day when I strolled around IKEA with my daughter we came across milk-bottle-shaped vases. £1 apiece. Eventually all your old rubbish can be re-imagined as a designer idea. I must get thinking to see what I can start commercialising and thus make my fortune!