Wednesday, January 2, 2008

The Christmas Letter

Dear ---insert name of distant friend/relative here ---

What a year it has been! It seems like only a few weeks ago that I was writing my last bulk Christmas brag letter to you all, and here I am doing it again. Here are some highlights from a year in the life of me, that I am sure you will all enjoy reading during the non-ratings TV season:

In June, I went to Mexico for a conference where I helped a colleague to learn several helpful Spanish phrases including "Is my Spanish that bad?", "Is there a canoe in the town?" and "How much is your daughter?"

In November, I met a compulsive lier! Luckily, she was the "give-give-give so you will love me" sort, and I came out of it with a blender, a dozen bottles of wine and champagne, lots of chocolate and four cans of Kilkenny stout.

Puttanesca has become my favourite pasta sauce.

Felix and I have had a rocky few months together but we took a trip to New Zealand a few weeks ago which turned out to be a good chance to have fantastic Japanese food, make up silly nicknames for hotel rooms ("the swamp"), and learn interesting things about popular music that we have forgotten already.

My near life-size cardboard cutout of Steve Waugh has spent most of the year folded in half and lying under the couch. This is a little sad for me, because Steve is a legend, and good company when nobody else is around to talk to. He's a very good listener. One of my flatmates is not really a fan of dear Steve, which was the main reason for leaving him folded away, but now (otherwise quite sadly) said flatmate is moving out so I look forward to bringing Steve back out into the open air for a few months.

As you all know, I don't have any children. No doubt, if I did, they would all be brilliant so this is the part of the letter where I would detail their achievements of the previous 12 months. Degrees would have been completed (with a dean's prize or something), headhunting would have happened, there might have been some cosmonautical travel and something else fabulous yet slightly quirky, like a starring role in a Bollywood movie, or second place in the New York marathon.

Season's greetings, and I wish you all well in your lives of "quiet desperation". Having read this letter, you are presumably aware that your lives are nothing more than barely whelming in comaprison to mine. Never mind, you have next year's letter from me to look forward to.
Tootles! xx

5 comments:

Nerd Girl said...

Dear Zosia,
how could you have left out the achievements of siblings? Knowing what good stock you come from always impresses those less fortunate.

Jo said...

I always found that my life-sized Princess Leia and Han Solo cardboard cut-outs worked a treat deterring burglars if propped in a window with a light on behind them.

If your cut-out of Steve is wielding a cricket bat, all the better.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Felix for Zosia said...

HI Jo, as a matter of fact, Steve, nattily dressed in the white pants and formal blazer is most certainly leaning in a rather debonair manner on a cricket bat. Perhaps at a distance debonair could be mistaken for menacing...

N - consider my next post a partial response to your comment. x

Cléa said...

I enjoyed this so much! I get one of these letters from a 'brag couple with young kids' every year, pdf'ed complete with pictures and it makes me gag. This year I found out that none of the circle of friends it goes to ever reads it!