HERE’S MY CARD

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28158, 22 December 1956, Page 10

HERE’S MY CARD

(By

! WHIM WHAM]

I need an Extension of several Yards On my Mantelpiece to carry the Christmas Cards. Some People thread them on a Piece of String— Personally I don’t care for that kind

of Thing; It makes an ugly sort of untidy

Festoon, An Object you can’t stop looking at too

soon. So the usual motley Accumulation extends All over the Shelf and falls off at both ends. Some bear Sentiments expressed with simple Propriety, Testifying to the sender’s Taste if not his Piety, Others are vulgar Enticements to Insobriety, Still Others all Holly and Snow and Reindeer and Sleighs, An artistic Convention I find difficult to praise. In these and other more or less decorous Ways I am reassured of the continued Esteem Of numberless Relations and Friends,

who seem To manage quite nicely without me most of the year, But whose Christmas Messages unfailingly appear. “Now did we, or didn’t we—? And why

have we not Heard from Uncle Bert, is he offended or dead or What?” But whoever sends one and whoever defaults, My annual Award of a Tin of Bath

Salts Goes as usual to the .AUNT WHO GETS IN FIRST And starts the relentless Process that can't be reversed Until Twelfth Night—that Hour will

strike When you can discard, and burn the whole Lot if you like. Meanwhile, it’s double Parking on the Mantelpiece And Greetings to All! And may their

Tribes increase. Silence, you Cynics! Spread elsewhere

your Gloom! Even if I CAN’T open the Door with- • out the Things blowing all over the Room.