Christmas baking

has yet to be done.

I am not making Christmas cake this year. I could still do it but it has been made for visitors and there will be very few of those  this year. People are still being discouraged from visiting one another - and rightly so. There are still cases of the Covid virus appearing. It could easily get out of hand if we start visiting each other.

I will make shortbread. It is relatively easy to do - just time consuming. There are people who will expect that and who won't have anything at all for Christmas unless I give them something...well maybe their nursing homes will give them something but that's not quite the same thing as a "little something" from someone they know out in the community.

And I have the Christmas cards to send out. I bought the stamps two days ago with the intention of doing them yesterday - but I ended up worrying about tomato plants instead. The stamps look vaguely like a Greek or Russian Orthodox icon - Mary, Joseph and infant.

I found some spare stamps the other day. They dated back to 2006 - just Mary and the baby that year. We could send a local Christmas card for 45c that year.  It is now 65c for a local card - but a local letter costs $1.10. MsW has left me a message asking me if she can use the subscription service over the weekend to send some e-cards to people overseas. As her pocket money helped to pay for it this seems only fair.

But I will send proper cards to people who are old enough to appreciate them. There are friends who need the annual letter - "because how else do we know we are still here" someone told me.  I know I am here but it seems they need to know they are still there as well. 

That comment made me aware that I really need to write a new address book. Reading the old one is sad. There are too many names crossed out, people who are no longer with us. Not all of them were very old. My friend M.... in Wales who was only 43  when she died suddenly and unexpectedly at her place of work one morning. My friend B.... in Canada who, like her mother, had early onset dementia. She was smart and caring until she started to "forget" things. There is the address of my friend C.... who went through law school with me. He and his partner helped me move and had me over for meals. We spent hours in the canteen - notes in front of us working on past examination papers.  He died all too soon of cancer. And my friend E... in England who always wrote "Dear Antipodes..." It was her daughter who wrote to me saying, "Cat... Mum asked me to let you know...it has been forty-three years..."

I look at the other addresses on the Christmas card list and wish some of them were close enough to be given shortbread. It's why I make shortbread and yet another reason to write. 

Christmas cards are more important than cake.