this year, mattgreen and i appear to have more christmas cards to write than ever before. we've sent out a dozen or so to relatives already and i counted up tonight and we have 39 more to go.

i'm one of those people who likes to write a proper message to each person, but after writing about 10 or so, i had the following conversation with mattgreen:

alicey: god! this is a nightmare. i'm going to have to start writing 'dear x. love alice, matt and isabel' in every card.
mattgreen: you could do with a stamp. KUNGG! (matt bangs his fist on the table in a stamping motion) you could have one of those tick boxes, that say, "dear friend/relative/person i vaguely know"; "merry christmas/happy new year/see you in 2005" and so on.
alicey: excellent! i could have one of those ones you can move the letters round, like the date stamp at the library...
mattgreen: 'to friend. merry christmas. love green family' or 'dear close relative. generic seasons greetings to you and your family unit'

by the way, if you get a christmas card from us in the next few days, it wasn't your card that was annoying. honest.