Jack is late again – –

Every year around this time we were among the favored few that got an end of year letter in the mail from our dear friend Lindsay. Lindsay’s letters were reverse works of art; where everyone else’s holiday missives groaned with good cheer, his just groaned.

Wendy and I still quote what we consider the best line ever from his 2010 card: My sister’s house is sinking down a mine shaft. The council engineers don’t think they can save it.

 Everyone who received his Christmas Cheerless letters felt honored and we would all exchange comments about it wherever we were in the world.

Lindsay left us a few years back, but he will never be forgotten. So – to continue his tradition, here’s a few highlights of the low points of my year.

Dead Furnace

At the start of the year our gas fired central heating furnace died and it took a month to get a replacement, so we used our wood stove to keep heat in the house – –

Health checks

I passed out while getting ready for bed one night and had a whole host of health checks which showed me to be in perfectly good shape!

Scotland

We returned to Scotland in June and I got my first foray over the ‘Rest and be Thankful’ from Arrochar to Iveraray – wonderful views! And then we all caught COVID.

New stove

Our old woodstove had been cheap and too small so we invested in a much better and more efficient one. We also learned about using well-seasoned wood! The guy who took the stove out for us said it was a wonder we hadn’t burned the house down or asphyxiated ourselves on noxious fumes.

Storm damage

We caught the edge of hurricane Helene and lost sections of our recently installed metal roof. To my amazement our insurance company promptly paid for a replacement and local roofers did a magnificent job. We were trapped in the house for a day while they heaved sharp sheet metal shards over the sides of the roof. It was an experience.

Wendy

Wendy produced, researched and presented a series of radio shows that aired across the Appalachian states. Then the funding body cancelled the grant. She joined some of her writing friends for a couple of weeks in Mexico and discovered its health system was cheap and efficient because she had an emergency EKG. (She’s going to be fine.)

So there it is, dripping with Christmas cheer – or something, anyway. Fa la frigging la.

We’re sure that 2015 will be just wonderful – – –