How full is your letterbox?

December heralds for this household a special time - it is the only time of the year that significant amounts of 'personal' mail fill our letterbox. For most of the year, it contains bills, marketing materials and 'official' letters. For a few short weeks a year, there are also handwritten items wishing us seasonal greetings.

But I've noticed a trend. There was once a time when we'd receive around 100 Christmas cards. This year, I reckon we'll be lucky to get 50. I don't think it's that we're less popular than we used to be....I think it's just that less people send cards nowadays.

Before our time, the sending of a handwritten card through the mail was the accepted way to convey greetings and best wishes to family and friends worldwide.

The first commercial Christmas cards were commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in London in 1843. It was not an idea of totally altruistic origins however, as Cole had helped introduce the Penny Post three years earlier. Imagine the boost to the postal services Christmas cards must have provided over the years.

By the latter half of the 19th century, Australia and the United States had followed suit.

Nowadays however, there are many options for sending festive greetings: email, e-cards, text messages, a message on a blog or a Facebook wall. Phone calls are cheaper than they once were.

Some people don't even bother with any of the above.

I am a die-hard card sender, but mine don't always make it out before Christmas. I believe a card is as good in the New Year as it is in the week before Christmas.

Call me old-fashioned, but I love to receive cards from friends and family. I especially love the year-in-review letters and/or photos some people include - there's nothing like catching up on a year's news in a couple of minutes.

It takes time, but the sending of a card sends more than a piece of paper. It tells the recipient that you are thinking of them, and that they are still a valued part of your life whether or not you have had much contact over the previous twelve months or so.

But then again, an email could also send that same message. In these technologically advanced times, are the traditional cards' days numbered?

To card or not to card? That is the question.

RSVP grumpiness

While we're on the subject of birthday parties (it's birthday party season in my household), let's talk about the etiquette of RSVPs.

My six year old is having a birthday party this weekend. Written invitations were mailed four weeks ago with a clearly marked RSVP date (one week prior to the party) and two options for RSVP (mobile phone or email).

Three days out from the party and four children were unaccounted for. So, I followed up with their parents. One is going away that weekend, another is coming to the party, the third has been off school ill and will let me know closer to the date (fair enough - although the party is tomorrow and I haven't heard so far), and the fourth I still haven't heard back from.

Then this morning a child who was one of the first to RSVP in the affirmative said to me at school drop off that she was sorry she can't come to the party as she is going to a friend's school fair. As her mother had RSVP'd so quickly and so definitely, this confused me and when I happened to see the mother in the school carpark on my way out, I asked her about her child telling me she's not coming (although I didn't mention the school fair bit).

"Ah, yes," she said. "She's been sick, so I'm just waiting to see if she's well enough to come to the party. I'll SMS you first thing tomorrow morning. She really wants to come if she can."

Okay then.

Call me old-fashioned, but I treat RSVP-ing seriously. When I say yes or no to something I do so before the date on the invitation and in the manner requested on the invitation. Both my girls have been taught that once something has been accepted you don't then change your mind if a better offer comes up. My oldest in particular has had a couple of occasions this year where she's missed good friend's parties or sleepovers because she was already committed elsewhere.

Before our time, a written invitation would have necessitated a written RSVP. Heck, even in my time, I can recall writing endless replies to friends' parents for invitations to 18th and 21st birthday parties.

Another school mum who has much older step-children tells me that organising 18th and 21st birthday parties nowadays is a nightmare, as no-one RSVPs in advance. Parents are left wondering how many exactly they are catering for, while the younger generation watch their mobile phones in case a better offer appears in their SMS in-box.

But then, perhaps they were the ones whose parents didn't RSVP to six year old birthday parties either.

Tell me, am I just grumpy and out of touch with the etiquette of today?

The party dilemma

“New York children grow up and have birthdays just as children do everywhere...but not quite. Forget Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Hide and Go Seek. Today’s most popular party game is Can You Top This? – with both parents and children as participating players. “Janie has a clown for her birthday, I want a clown that does magic tricks,” says one knowledgeable 4-year-old. Her mother complains, “The magician’s been done to death. We’ve got to find something new, something the children aren’t tired of, this year. This problem at age 4. And the parties get bigger, if not better than ever.”

Sound familiar? I've certainly heard parents saying similar things about parties here in Melbourne.

What may surprise you is that the above quote comes from an article written in 1969. (“The Party-Go-Round” by Claire Berman, New York magazine, 19 May 1969.)

While I imagined that the sixties were a time of pass-the-parcel and musical chairs at home, it seems (in New York at least) the party-go-round had already begun.

We recently celebrated my oldest daughter's 12th birthday at home with a group of 14 of her (girl) friends. By twelve, it seems they've done it all when it comes to parties - iceskating, theme parks, reptile shows, crazy hair, nail bars, fairy shops, even Gold Class movies...

So we fell-back on a bit of homegrown fun. We organised a 'reality team challenge' party - based on some of my daughter's favourite reality TV shows.

Four team challenges in four hours. Essentially, what they were doing was old-fashioned games and competition, just with an updated theme. It was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of preparation work.

And this, I think, is how the party-go-round began. With parents increasingly time-poor, there just aren't the hours in the day to prepare games, bake food, make party bags and clean up afterwards.

Outsourcing the party looks a very attractive option. But with a limited number of entertainers and options, it does become a case of 'what's the next big thing?"

My youngest daughter has been to three parties this year with the same reptile show. It was great the first time, but even five year olds start to tire of the same old snakes on their shoulders and frogs on their heads.

It's very easy to say that all kids want is a pass-the-parcel, some fairy bread and a balloon to take home, but even the simplest of parties takes a good deal of organisation and preparation and with many families struggling to fit everything into their lives already, that may be just a parcel and a balloon too much.

Outsourcing or home-grown? What do you think?

How many phone numbers do you remember?

In a recent article* about the impact of technology one technophobe declared she hardly used any of the functions on her mobile and doesn’t even put phone numbers in the electronic contact list. “I remember them all.  All I want to know about is the green ‘on’ button”.

Wow, yes, I remember keeping loads of phone numbers in my head.  I was good at it.  I topped my year in Geography once because I memorised all the essential facts about Australia such as circumference, area, distances and so forth as if they were telephone numbers.  Now I store telephone numbers in my electronic contact lists and in the case of a small number of close friends – on a post-it on my desk.

Phone numbers are always at hand so why bother to memorise them? I rarely even ask for a phone number because in most cases it comes up on my phone display and I can store the number from there.

Having an aid to remember phone numbers is not new.

The first Rolodexes appeared in the early 1930s

And I bet many of you had one of these, way back when.  Perhaps you still do...

When you use a Rolodex or Teledex you look at the number while you dial.   Do that enough and you’ll commit that number to memory, without even realising it.  Use your phone contact list or your speed dial and you miss that step.  You may never memorise numbers outside those you absolutely have to. 

Some research shows that our ability to remember things is decreasing as technology increasingly takes on that role.  With the vast increase in information available technology provides the means for us to sort and categorise the data and enables us to recall (electronically) than ever before. But then we lose our mobile, or our hard disk crashes and we feel empty, like our very life has been taken away.  Perhaps we wouldn’t feel that way if we were sure that the computer that stays with us 24/7, our brain, was able to recall everything that was important to us.

In my younger years I could remember the phone numbers of all my close friends, my extended family, the school, the doctor, the dentist, the beautician, the pizza joint in Nedlands and later the work numbers of many of my colleagues.  Today I couldn’t tell you my own work number.

I’m off to memorise a few phone numbers. How many can you remember?

 

*Australian Vogue (I know, of all the places!), November 2009 p. 146

High on Childbirth

“Heroin. The sedative for coughs” Bayer advertisement from the late 1800s

 

When I was pregnant with my first child I spent a lot of time considering the pain I was about to experience during childbirth.  I was determined to have a plan - just like the childbirth books told me I must have.  I was quite sure that with determination I would need no more than a TENS machine and positive thinking. Ha. Totally didn't work.

During one visit to my Obstetrician I explained that I had this well thought out plan.  He looked at me, raised an eyebrow, and said you know the best possible treatment for pain in childbirth is a dose of Heroin.

Excuse me?

Oh yes, he continued, after it was made illegal to produce Heroin for medicinal purposes in Australia we stockpiled it [at this hospital] and only ran out in the late 1980s. 

Apparently doctors in Britain can still prescribe Heroin (as the drug Diamorphine) in cases of extreme pain – usually patients experiencing trauma, cancer ... or childbirth.

Heroin, along with other drugs now classed as illegal narcotics such as cocoa leaf and marijuana, were common ingredients in many medicines  and ‘tonics’ at the turn of the 20th century, even those targeted at babies and toddlers.

We are a drug-taking society – be it coffee, nicotine, alcohol, prescribed drugs, illicit drugs or chocolate.  The artificial stimulation of the senses occupies a part of many of our days. Now I’m not about to call for the legalisation of cocaine-based teething solutions for babies or heroin-based cough mixture but it did make me wonder what drugs we freely take today that in fifty years time will be deemed illegal or, at least, shocking?

Don't you wish you had staff?

"The Housemaid's folding back her window-shutters at eight o'clock the next day, was the sound which first roused Catherine...her fire was already burning."  from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, Chapter VII.

While chatting last week it struck Alison and I that if we had lived in Jane Austen's England we wouldn't have to do the washing, or the ironing, or prepare any meals.  In fact it is likely that the most energetic task in our diaries for the day would be a brisk walk in the countryside, possibly accompanied by a large hunting dog.

Sure, we wouldn't have been able to inherit property but as I face a large pile of ironing, an ever-growing pile of laundry and decisions about what to cook for dinner I wonder how far we women have really come in the last 200 years.

Even Elinor and Marianne Dashwood in their straightened circumstances were able to afford a cook and a male servant when kicked out of the family home.

So where have we gone wrong? 

I'd be more than happy to put up with the hassle of having to 'dress' for dinner if only someone else would cook it for me.  And as for having to rise at eight to the sound of someone opening the shutters and the cackle of a newly lit fire ... I guess I could get used to it.

Do those cents really add up?

The Mof's One Year National Savings Service Badge.

When I was in primary school in the 1970s, the local Commonwealth Bank staff would visit the school regularly for children to deposit small amounts of money into their school savings accounts. These were interest-bearing deposit accounts which converted to regular bank accounts when the children left school. 'School Banking Day' was a long-standing tradition.

There is a excellent short filmclip at the Australian Screen website showing school children arriving at school in 1951 and giving their teacher small deposits of coins which he records in their bank books.

Before our time, the concept of regular bank savings was drummed into children from a young age, and it was not a phenomenon particular to Australia.

The Mof recalls that in Scotland:

The maxim of, "Look after the pence and the pounds will look after themselves," was drilled into us as children and we were encouraged to save whatever we earned or were given. Apart from the piggy bank, which could be rifled in desperation, one of the common ways to save was through the National Savings scheme.

The National Savings scheme was started in Britain during the First World War. The British Government introduced several ways to save as they needed both to reduce borrowings and raise funds for the war effort. The National Savings Movement, as it was originally called, grew from volunteers who organised Local Savings Committees and was launched at the Guildhall in London in 1916 with the intent to encourage British people to save and prosper.

Groups were formed in factories, shops, clubs and schools with an organiser collecting and recording the monies on a weekly basis. Savings took the form of savings stamps, certificates and bonds.

On a personal level I first encountered National Savings as it came to be known, as a student in primary school. Every Monday morning children arrived with their few pennies (the well off ones may have had a shilling!) to be collected and recorded by the teacher. On reaching a certain amount, which may have been 20 shillings (one
pound) or perhaps 21 shillings (a guinea) the child was given a savings certificate.

Later as a teacher I was on the collecting and recording side. Every year a district National Savings conference was held at a very swish hotel -- one I would never have been able to frequent as a humble teacher!

Service badges were awarded to the volunteer collectors. The one year badge was as far as I aspired, as I then married and came to Australia.

Nowadays we still encourage our children to save, but I suspect that the physicality of clutching coins in your sweaty hand on the way to school, handing them over and watching as the numbers recorded in your passbook grew each week is somewhat diluted by e-banking methods.

Although my husband and I insist that our daughters save some of their pocket money each week, it is transferred automatically via a direct debit to their account. It must be hard for them to imagine that the money even exists!

They do however, 'save up' their disposable pocket money in their purses for things they want to buy, and the youngest has started collecting every stray five cent piece she finds around the place and putting them into a container in the kitchen. It is surprising how many wayward five cents there are in this world! It's a slow process, but she now has a couple of dollars in the container. For her, this provides the joy that 1950s children may have had watching their bank deposits grow.

Does the electronic nature of banking today challenge children's concepts of long-term saving? Do school banking savings schemes still exist? How do you encourage children to save for the future?