A Christmas Letter to Santa

I went to a Christmas Tree festival the other day - again a very moving experience seeing all 40 well decorated trees brought a tear to my eye, as it made me realise again just how many charities and good causes were in need of money.   And, really forty is just a tip of the iceberg of how many there really are with great needs both in our local community, as well a nationally and internationally.

Some of the trees were decorated with commercially produced and purchased decorations, others with handmade decorations and items relevant to their charity, and others with photos of their aims within stars and other shapes.

As another visitor said, it`s an expensive place to visit! - although the entrance is free, you want to give a donation to all the collecting buckets because they are so worthwhile.

I think my favourite part of it all was this tree and it`s letter to Santa.

  (click on the photo to enlarge it to read the letter)

Full Names

I wonder if others have noticed what I noticed when working the other day?....

I was addressing a lot of envelopes - no, not my Christmas cards yet - but envelopes as part of my work to post off invoice payments.   Copying from the firms addresses on their invoices I discovered that, whereas we used to abbreviate the county, such Nottinghamshire to Notts., Berkshire to Berks,  and Cambs., for Cambridgeshire etc..etc...  they all now put the full word, as well as the postcode.   And it set me wondering why. 

In these days of text messaging; of shortening of peoples names, some even to just initials (I know somone who just likes to be called CJ instead of the full name); of the short versions we use of so many words in everyday language to what they used to be - all to save time, I suppose,  it seems odd that the counties have gone back to the full names, especially as we have the postcodes by which I think the mail is really sorted.   

In fact I did an experiment a few years ago and when on a holiday sent myself a postcard with just the house number and postcode on to see what would happen....... and, it arrived as quickly as a fully addressed envelope!    Wonder what would happen if I just did that for all my Christmas cards?!  It would save a lot of time!