Caroline O'Donoghue: Greeting cards I require for 2021
I found out yesterday that my local sorting office all got Covid just before Christmas. Every last employee had to be quarantined and some interns were apparently brought in to deal with the Christmas post. This is both amazing, and also, explains a lot. Since the New Year, I’ve been receiving battered-looking packages that were posted by friends and family in late November. Some of these people had been on — has your present arrived yet? Are you sure you gave me the right address? — but other people hadn’t been in touch at all. As soon as I unwrap the boxes, I feel a flush of terrible shame. The idea that people I love have sent me gifts, assumed I received them, and then simply didn’t say thank you is utterly mortifying.
I have sent a lot of cards in the last year, and it strikes me that there are too few cards for the kinds of society we now have. What I want is a box of five cards that say: Thank You!
And also . Maybe it could have a picture of a sloth on it dressed like a postman.
This is not the only greeting card I require. I have some more ideas, and if you happen to be a card-maker, please take them.
In late 2019 I had a coffee that turned into a five-hour lunch with another writer. We had met several times before at literary events, but this was the first time we had decided to hang out for pleasure rather than business. I remember feeling, at the end of the day, the tantalising buzz of a new friend — not an acquaintance, but someone I could really devote some time into adoring. We arranged dinner for late February. The date rolled around and we decided to put it off until 'this Covid stuff blows over'. Well, the joke was firmly on us. Not only has it not blown over, but the little sapling friendship will have to basically be repotted when we eventually do start again. I have almost no memory of what we talked about last time, and have probably forgotten important biographical details. How can I pick up where we left off, when I can’t even remember if she has one sister or two?
I see this as being an arty card, with two yew trees growing over opposite banks of a river and trying to touch. The inside of the card would read 'If we manage to survive the plague, let’s talk about rescheduling dinner'.
I have needed the greeting card 'Sorry I Was Weird' since 1994, but I need it even more now. The other day I was trying to buy a plant pot from my local hardware shop and the older man behind the counter said, sort of under his breath, “everyone I know is in hospital".
Then he went back to showing me the pot. My brain short-circuited. It was the kind of utterance that you only process about a minute after it has already happened, where your mouth is talking about Monstera plants but your brain is thinking: did that man just tell me that everyone he knows is in hospital? And did I just… say nothing? He must think I’m an arsehole.
As I left, I mumbled “sorry about…” and he said “yeah, yeah, yeah” like he had regretted saying anything.
Almost all the shops around me are closed, but sometimes a shop that really should be open is closed, too. A grocer or a takeaway will abruptly close its doors for a week, with a vague note in the door about 'personal business'. Then the shop will be open again, and the shopkeeper will be quiet, and no one will say a thing about it.
I live on a road that is half young families and half older people who have been living here since the late 60s. They have raised their families and now, for the most part, they appear to be alone.
Everyone says that we should check in with our elderly neighbours, but no one tells you about the fact that quite a lot of elderly neighbours are mortified by the idea of being checked in with. Maybe I am the only person who has experienced this; maybe I am bad at the art of checking in, or maybe I give off a predatory vibe. Because I’m a freelancer and because I’m a dog owner, I tend to meet quite a lot of older people out and about. Jack Russells go down very well with the elderly. Sometimes I get the vibe that they are alone, and sometimes I will breezily try to suggest we get a cup of tea one day. This was in the old world, when cups of tea were legal. Literally every time, the older person flees. Maybe this is a response to a lingering mistrust of the Irish among Britain’s seniors; maybe they think I am going to steal their roof shingles if they let me into their house.
But even without the roof shingles, I kind of get it. Most people who are vulnerable despise the idea of being thought of as 'vulnerable', and I would hate the idea of some loud woman and her weird dog trying to do me a favour. But at this point, in the freezing, deadly months of 2021, favour-offering and favour-taking isn’t a courtesy, it’s a lifeline.
If some young card-maker wants to make a stack of postcards that say 'Do You Need Your Shopping Done? I Am Irish But I Won’t Steal Your Gate', it would be much appreciated.
