The Bluestocking: Next stop, Christmas!

[ifIwerenotanandroid]

Join us as we open our slightly wonky advent calendar. 🌲

(copies available behind the bar £12.50 each, no refunds)

A friend from the Valleys told me a story once of sending a letter to a relative back home, addressed to "Jones the dentist" or similar, and it actually arrived.

It may be made up, but I've heard the same kind of story about the post in Donegal, where you have to use nicknames because there's only a handful of surnames in the whole county.

I went to stay with my DM one year on around the 22nd and she was so rude I left on Christmas Eve. I drove home and bought steak, a mini Christmas pudding and a bottle of champagne at the local supermarket just before it closed.

I spent Christmas Day alone. But it was so much better than being at her house. Even though I cried most of the day.

It's the only time I've spent Christmas alone and I have had Christmas with her since, though at my house, not hers.

But I was actually loved it because I wasn't doing what she expected. And the sky didn't fall in.

It's ok to do Christmas exactly as you want. Especially if that's no presents, no big dinner and no booze. 💙

Absolutely not rude to ask 😊 I felt I needed to acknowledge my animal side along with each of you BS regulars.

Honestly, there are lovely people in here.

We are having an unusual Christmas, due to losses and strange relationships this year. With two young adult children we will still keep traditions going but I'm feeling a mixture of sadness for Christmas past and relief for Christmas present. Love to all and may we all be free from any restrictions we long to shake off this year.

I love the lead up to Christmas - lights, carols and decorations, present buying etc. but have often felt the day itself to be an anti-climax. I live alone now by choice, but do have family members within easy reach and see them on a regular basis,, so it has become a habit to gather at one of our houses for Christmas lunch (mine this year). I've often thought it would be lovely to spend the day on my own in any way I wish but, when I have tentatively mentioned it, there have always been cries of horror "but you can't be alone on Christmas Day, what would you do?" I've had to bite back the reply "exactly what I want to do".

However, I do enjoy seeing my family and as the youngest member of the oldest generation, I realise that there may not be many more opportunities to get together in this way, so I'm content to keep up the routine for the moment.

I am very conscious that I do have a choice though and that, for others, this time of year may be more difficult due to personal circumstances, bereavement etc. Warm wishes and thoughts to anyone who finds it so.

What very touching tales of Christmas. ❤️
I wish you all peace and joy, and remember that the world will be growing lighter very soon.

I've spent quite a few Christmasses on my own and don't really mind, but my worst Christmas was a few years sgo, having to call 999 for DH, ( cancer related, rather than "set himself alight with a flaming pudding" sort of accident) and watching him carted off to hospital on Christmas afternoon. I couldn't go with him as the nearest hospital was 45 miles away, and I had no means of getting back. But we both survived! And I count my blessings.

We'll have a quiet day this year, just the two of us, with family stuff either side.

Bunbury was the one who suggested knocking them over with a blunt object and setting them on fire, IIRC.
I'll go with the Grand Marnier.
He has his virtues.

Edited for spelling, both mine and autocarrot's.

Myrtle, it must have felt good to shake off a parent who was being so horrible to you.

I hope the champagne tasted amazing.

Two classic successful deliveries by the Irish postal service

does anyone remember ‘That’s Life’ having a run of stories about addresses the Royal Mail managed to interpret? The one which stuck in my mind was the exotic ‘Arijaba’ being correctly identified as ‘Harwich Harbour’. I think the story culminated in someone popping an unlabelled amusingly shaped vegetable into the post which was duly delivered to them. DF said he’d had a postcard delivered from overseas from someone he’d met in the war addressed to Sgt <common ‘trade name’>, then a misspelling of his (non uniquely named) village , Great Britain.

It was good. Sadly I have never been able to fully shake her off. I went complete no contact in my early 20s for at least six months. I was living with my then husband and his family. She called the house asking for me and my FIL came to me and said I needed to speak to her. I didn't actually but I had to do what he said.

Thinking back she never asked what she had done or apologised. We just sort of picked up. Later she said that she'd been in a supermarket and remembered what I'd said and that it felt like a stab to her stomach. So all of the conversation we've had about it has been about her feelings and nothing about why I wanted to stop seeing her.

My DSD's mother cut her off just over three years ago. She rushed downstairs to see us and said, quick, how do I block her! We showed her how and we reassured her that if her mother ever showed up at the door, I would turn her away. DSD didn't believe her dad could. I just said she's never coming in. (Also she's on benefits in a European country so she doesn't have the financial ability to show up.)

Since then DSD has flourished. She's not being constantly undermined and she's realising what a caring family looks like.

I wish I'd been able to do that.

I have still never got around to reading Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death, but I remember her talking in an interview about how her expose of the funeral business had obviously hit a nerve, based on the amount of correspondence she got.

She mentioned one particular letter that was addressed:

Jessica Mitford
Cheap Funerals
Oakland

Reading the last couple of pages, I want to send huge hugs to everyone at the Bluestocking, wherever you are, whatever memories you hold & however you feel about Christmas this year.

That was the gif I was looking for; but I found this one for the first time & I'm sending it to Swashy & Dr Swash, who will soon be together for Christmas.

That's lovely, Android.

'Love's the only house big enough for all the pain in the world'
[country legend Martina McBride]

but the Bluestocking does a good job on a local level 💙

Sorry I've not been around much. End of term in a few days and students and staff alike are just surviving at this point. Senior offspring is coming home for Christmas this week though, so that's something to look forward to.
Sending 💙💙💙 to everyone who needs it.
Now please point me in the direction of the hot chocolate bowser.

We used to live in the wilds of Shropshire, and our postman knew everyone, so when he had to deliver a letter to “Three thumbed Sammy, Somewhere on the Clee Hill” he knew exactly who it was for.

We are spending today getting packed up before heading south for the funeral - we were going to get the train down to London by train tomorrow, but with the amber rain warnings, we have decided to fly down. We’re breaking the journey in London and going on to Cornwall on Tuesday, but doing the return journey all on Thursday - 12+ hours! So we will be knackered when we get back, but we haven’t too much left to do for Christmas (unless I have forgotten things, which is perfectly possible). Ds2 and his girlfriend are arriving from Australia next weekend, which we are really looking forward to - and they’ve said they will help us get Christmas sorted.

Well, you'd better have your Christmas present a bit early. I've made you a sentient hot chocolate bowser so it can find you when you come to the Bluey.

I hope the journey down to Cornwall goes smoothly, and the funeral of your FiL is a comfort for your DH and all the family.
The journey back sounds like a bit of an Overland Expedition, but hopefully you will feel under less pressure than on the way down, and it will go OK.

That's amazing Android, thank you! 💙

i don’t have any Welsh stories, except that my aunt’s family moved to Wales, weren’t on the phone, (neither were we at the time) and the way to contact them in an emergency was through ‘Grey the Gas.’

However, a slightly related address story. A good friend has one sibling, a brother who moved to Australia a long time ago: years of being on Mumsnet now make me think he was the Golden Child. They kept in touch via occasional airmail letters but their parents never saw him or his family again, their mother being unable to fly for medical reasons.

Unlike him she didn’t go to university straight from school but later gained academic qualifications part-time and eventually was accepted for a Master’s at Cambridge.

She mentioned this in a letter, adding which college she was going to, and received a postcard at college from her brother addressed to Friend’s Name, Trinity Hall College, Cambridge, UK. He’d never sent her a postcard anywhere before and clearly didn’t believe she’d managed to ‘get to’ Cambridge.

(Trinity Hall and Trinity College are different colleges, both part of Cambridge University. There is no Trinity Hall College afaik, although I have found erroneous references online, such as this Lonely Planet one which is about Trinity Hall but is illustrated by a picture of Trinity College.)

AsWithGladys

In the days when my late father was a bit famous, he got a letter addressed to

Dad's name
City.

I know it's true- I saw it!

He wasn’t called John Smith, I imagine? 🙂
AWG

I have had a similar but lesser experience. My late father wasn’t at all famous but did have a reasonably unusual name, where you might know someone with either his first or his second name but probably not both.

He received a letter addressed to:
His Name
Completely the wrong street address
Correct name of small town
Correct name of neighbouring larger town.

Hurray for the old Post Office!

AWG

Marjorie Quarton, who had a varied career including buying all-black horses for the Swiss army, wrote a number of entertaining memoirs, in one of which she described getting a letter addressed to 'horse woman called margarine, [town name]' which sent her to a farm with just the nags she was looking for.

Conversation last week over tea produced many examples of the helpful and inventive ways our various postmen used to ensure we got our mail, and an agreement that they deserve their Christmas tips.

My parents befriended a lost American tourist once and a month or so later got a thank-you letter addressed to
[our unusual name, misspelt]
Dublin
Ireland