Well!  What a year!  I can’t really start this “Cheery Christmas Round Robin” any other way than to acknowledge how four words have transformed our lives in 2012! It all began when, while we were supposed to be shopping for really sturdy support garments, my best girl-chum Bunty Bigguns thrust a copy of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ at me.  She gave me a conspiratorial wink and said “Trust me, Glo, slip this into Smuddy’s copy of Muckspreader Weekly and you won’t know what’s hit you!”

I wasn’t expecting much when I did actually wrap his copy of MW round this doorstop of a novel but, boy-oh-boy, were my eyes going to be opened in the weeks to come!   The last time he showed any interest whatsoever  in a piece of printed matter was back in 1994 when  Motocross Monthly  featured a picture of him flat on his back under his trials bike in a Welsh bog with the headline ‘Smudd Takes a Thudd in the Mudd!’.  So it was that, with some surprise, I took a hit in my one good eye from the well-thumbed tome in question as it tumbled out of one of our numerous avalanche cupboards and I found he had not only read it but had been through it with a red pen making annotations in the margins.  I was even more surprised when he took to using the cordless drill and installed some oddly-placed hooks in the bedroom.  When questioned, he assured me that what I took to be a winch/industrial cable combination bolted to the foot of the bed was in fact a ‘Y-front tidy’.  Who am I to argue when he shows willing with a little bit of DIY?

Imagine then my astonishment when, one night as I was preparing to wriggle myself into my Wynciette ‘Onesy’  I found myself being slammed down flat on my back and subjected to a vigorous burst of human origami before being tied in place with a range of knots he can only have learned in the Combined Cadet Force!   I haven’t seen him move so fast since his colostomy bag turned out to be not everything we were promised – so much for my lovely wipe-clean linoleum which very soon had to be replaced with more practical concrete covered with a thick layer of sand which I have to shovel out/shovel in on a bi-daily basis. But I digress …

Anyway, what a boon to a tired marriage the formulaic piece of faux-prose that is FSOG turned out to be!  The only downside seems to be that the household’s annual bill for bailer-twine has shot up by 500% over the last twelve months but hey-ho, in every life a little rain must fall I guess.  I almost don’t mind that the tendons in my left leg will never be the same again because my love-life has been transformed by a bit of blue-purplish prose and, although I’ll never feel beautiful again, I’ve certainly been the object of a certain someone’s ardent attention recently … as I believe they say on the fields of football – “Get in!”

Such is our joy at the rejuvenation of our conjugal bliss that we’ve taken to sharing romantic breakfasts in bed, meeting up for saucy midweek lunch assignations and of course going on weekly ‘Date Nights’ where we bill, coo and flirt at a restaurant before coming home eager to see if the ‘Y-front tidy’ still works.   We’ve both also treated ourselves to lots of new clothes, but only because we have each put on another couple of stone in weight because of all the post-coital cheese sandwiches and chocolate biscuits:  I’ve gone up 3 dress-sizes and he’s recently finding a XXXXXL a bit snug.  However, until the time comes when we can’t just pop into Anne Summers to pick up complementary outfits in PVC in both our sizes, we think we’ll carry on as we are until either my hip finally pops out or the bedroom floor falls through.

As for the rest of the Smudd family, I have to confess that I cried with pride when Smuddlette got her GCSE results this summer – 6 Fs, 5 Ds and a C!  These are the finest exam results anyone in the Smudd household has ever achieved and it proved to us once and for all she wasn’t wrong in her strident and relentless insistence that she could run a 24-hour mobile Nail Bar throughout Yr 11 without her school work suffering.   Of course, at first this meant that I had to ferry her everywhere, day and night, but she soon seemed to have made so much money out of fitting hideously-decorated talons to women with money to spare that by the time her exam results were known she’d already funded a quick 5-star break in Las Vegas:  somehow she’d managed to tag along at the edge of a mixed bag of privileged Hooray Henrys and Henriettas and while she was in the thick of it she took some lovely photos on her mobile phone of them enjoying a hectic game of strip poker back at the hotel after a night on the sauce!  I’m not sure she actually took these photos because I’m sure I saw some very similar images on the front pages of some tabloids – still, all these ginger lads look the same to me..

Anyway, after that she seemed to have no end of spare cash so she told us she was off to France during the summer and – would you believe it? – it seems she was just waving her new camera and telephoto lens about when she found she’d  snapped a few high-resolution piccies of a very thin bird sunbathing with a slightly balding blond chap at a chateau which was obviously quite a distance from a public road.  Apparently her photography skills are so good, the instant she tried to sell her pictures they were snapped up and featured in publications across the globe.  Not bad for a 16 year old with a new camera, eh?  Once she was home, I did ask her where she took the photos because I thought the people in the piccies looked a bit familiar but mainly I was so pleased she’d had a good time after working so hard and achieving such good exam results.  And she came back from that holiday so loaded with cash that I finally had to admit that her Nail Bar business was the way forward and stopped badgering her to bother with A levels.  She’s now out a lot at night, Smudd Junior lives away at college so …  (distant sound of ceiling falling through.._)

And so to Smudd Junior – where do I start with him?  Having left school after one year of his A levels to pursue a course in all things practical, agricultural, mechanical and oil-soaked, he has, as he’s nearing any chance of a qualification, found so much wrong with this course that his inner militant has risen within him his outrage about the standards of the course have driven him to become Student Rep.  We naturally understand that so much of his time has been taken up complaining to the course management  he hasn’t managed to attend any of his lessons except ‘AS Level – Naturally Handsome’ for the last term and indeed we have just received a letter from the college telling us as much.  However, we have had his report and find that, despite the fact that he’s down as ‘a belligerent upstart’, he’s been awarded a triple A* for ‘Good Looks’ coupled with a Double Merit for being ‘Astonishingly Pleasing To The Eye’.  He also got a Distinction in ‘Winning Personality’.  We couldn’t be more proud.  I can’t see the TV very well these days but I’m sure I’ve seen a police-issue photofit of him several times on ‘About Angular’ this year and I could swear it’s him cavorting in the rolling surf on this Christmas’s ‘Havitoff’ aftershave advert.   I am often wrong though.

Otherwise it’s been business as usual in 2012, with me on a retainer as the token toothless & sweary granny for The Jeremy Kyle Show: all I have to do is to sit there in some wrinkled stockings and say “E’s ‘ad me pension away” or “I ‘ad a full set o’ teef before ‘e ‘it me wiv ‘is Xbox an’ took off wi’ me di’mund ring” and the money just comes rolling in.  Likewise ‘Britain’s Fattest Families’ are always on the telephone, wanting me to occupy two chairs in a background shot at a hospital for a programme on Obesity Clinics.  Things look set to continue this way into 2012 and I have had a quiet word in ear of a J. Kyle producer who seems to share my enthusiasm for a short series on just how dangerous badly-written, globally-successful S&M novelettes can be to the health and wellbeing of hefty fatsos with clicky hips married to oversexed Bunters with high blood pressure: coming to a terrestrial channel near you soon.

Anyhoo, that’s the end of this last-minute Festive Missive to you all. I hope it finds you well.

Just to put this into perspective, I’m sure many of you will have, like me, received ‘Round Robins’ from people you last saw 19 years ago which are stuffed with crowing triumph about how Quentin has had yet another promotion (see new address in Switzerland) and how well Tarquin did at Harrow after all that money had been spent on him; there will be other infuriating people you now barely know who boast of the marathons, half-marathons and IronMan challenges they have completed and it may annoy you as much as it drives me to write this parody of the ‘Rub-it-in-Robins’ we have received this year.  Why don’t you send some in (change the names of course) and we could have a right laugh!

Nevertheless, I really do wish you and yours the very best this Christmas – and if any of you were wondering why I haven’t been on this site much this year … re-read paragraph 5!  So, until New Year or until the winch gives way,   I wish you a Bragging Christmas and a Boasting New Year.

A Pinkish Glo x

Daedalus X.
ParrotDecember 27, 2012 at 14:56

XMAS ROUND ROBIN FROM THE OFFICE OF HIS EXALTED TONINESS, THE PEACE ENVOY
TO THE MIDDLE EAST.

Guys,

Bin just a wonderful year, best yet. Even better than that year I allowed
The Pope to be blessed by me in the Vatican, and that time I was The Guy on
all the TV channels sorting out that War on Terror (as a favour to poor ol’
Georgie Bush). Jeez, wadda guy I am.

My Olympics, which I organised so brilliantly, were the best ever. Everyone
keeps saying how brilliantly it all went and how brilliant I am, fantastic!
And for such a record breaking cost of 12 billion. Wow, those taxpayers, gotta
luv ‘em (and their kids ‘n grandkids, ha)!

I’ll bet you loved my gig at the Luvvyson Inquiry. I get such a buzz giving
my self to the adoring barristers, judges, journalists and my public. What a
performance I gave, just pure Oscars gold.

Anyway, enough about me, oh wait, did I mention Yours Truly and Cheree are
thinking of buying another house. Our London pads are just getting sooo, you
know, boring ‘n stuff. You know the feeling, when you want to entertain some
of your oil-rich high bling gangster chums from Kazakhstan or the middle east
or waddever, our current bling thing just isn’t impressive enough. So we’re
thinking of buying Buck Palace from Liz. We haven’t had a reply from her yet,
so maybe I’ll get Alleystare Camp-bell to make her an offer she can’t refuse.
My, my. Alley and me often chuckle about his visits to apply a bit of
persuasion, “Doing a David Kelly” we call them. Ho ho.

Working really hard, as you’ve prob seen on TV! Did TWO days this year for
J.P.Morgans. Although the pay is pretty low, 100 grand I think, I feel I get
real pleasure doing it as a public service. I give from deep inside of myself
to the poor and unenlightened of my wisdom, my caring, my breadth of
experience and (of course) dazzling charm and good looks. Those poor grim
attendees at the shareholders’ meetings just love me when I take the stage.
The strong emotion they exude is amazing.

Cherree sez “Hi” by the way. She’s too busy to put words down right now,
she’s in the middle of a mind cleansing ritual with Carole Caplin. I think
that’s what they’re doing, there are two piles of expensive couturiered
clothes outside the astral blue mind-cleansing booth that Cherree had
installed in the bathroom. Wow! we’re so lucky with the wonderful loving staff
we get.

Eeyoo-un is doing great. After that job good ol’ Georgie Bush got for him
in Washington, we managed to pull another few favours and dump him in some big
bank or other. He must be doing really well, the Financial Services Authority
keep couriering documents here for him. Something about “urgent interview” and
“ponzi”, dunno what it means, probably some complicated investment banking biz
that only our Eeyoo-un is bright enough to understand.

The other kids I hardly ever see. The staff we have, by the way, are juuust
really really wonderful. Don’t know how we’d struggle without them, and all
paid for by the good ol’ taxpayer, yay!

Anyhoos, just hoping you enjoy all the good things I’m gonna bring you next
year.

I’m sure I’m gonna get that peace thing sorted in Israel as part of my very
modestly paid gig as THE Peace Envoy for the Middle East.

I’ll probably do another day or two to help out J.P.Morgans next year and I
will most likely be instrumental in reversing that profit slump they’ve
suffered since I joined them.

You know how everyone loves me to bits in the good ol’ U of K, well I’ve
also been toying with the idea of giving the good people of United Kingdom
loads of Tonyness. Yeah! I’m gonna let them love me even more by letting Noo
Labour make me leader again and hence (obviously!) become P.M.

I reckon that nice Ed the talking Miliguy will give up the leadership to
me, and my old chum Davey Cam will resign as soon as I tell him to. A cinch.
Waddya think?

Soo there it is. Another fab year and probably an even fabber one for
2013!!

Mwah, Luv All,

Tone ‘n Cheree

(as dictated to Daedalus X.Parrot December 2012)

NOTE: The persons referred to in this Round-Robin have absolutely no grip
on or relation with real life. Any similarity is purely coincidental, a result
of skillful spin-doctoring or a lack of brain cells in the reader.

Gloria Smudd
December 27, 2012 at 19:39

PenseivatDecember 26, 2012 at 20:41

Anna,
A hope is sent that good fortune follows you on your route through
life and thank you for your missive on your family. It seems to make my own
seem (almost) a success story. Daughter 1 has finally kicked her cocaine
habit, and the NHS have actually agreed to pay for a new septum, though due to
budgetary constraints, it’s a plastic one – knicked from an old Airfix kit,
I’m sure – and fitted in by some bloke from Azerbajan who claims to be a
doctor but rolled up wearing a set of overalls with ‘KWIKFIT’ on the breast
pocket. I will admit that while he was shite with a scalpel he was the bees
knees with a set of spanners! Daughter 2 has rejoined, for the 8th time,
‘Virgins for Christ’ and was accepted after claiming that she thought the 7
blokes she met were Gabriel’s Angels and she was doing God’s work – especially
as various times during the relationships, especially while they were
relaxing, every single one proclaimed the name of the Lord. One sad thing that
happened to me during the year was that I lost faith. I took part in a chain
letter – sad I know – in which each man had to send their wife to the name at
the top of the list. Over a period of time, I enjoyed the company of about 15
wives of other men. However, I broke the chain letter and disaster struck. I
got my own wife back! That has taught me something. Never lose faith. Faith
was No 8 and she was cracking, but that’s another story!
Happy New Year and
long may I continue reading your stories

Gloria Smudd
December 27, 2012 at 19:40

Andy ZEDecember 26, 2012 at 17:42

A great read tat really improved my day.

Thanks a lot for making the effort.

mewsicalDecember 26, 2012 at 16:37

Thanks GS – I was missing the Giles annual I always got at Xmas as a child,
but this more than made up for it!

LJHDecember 26, 2012 at 15:57

Thanks, Anna for including me on Mrs Smudd’s round robin. Exemplary!

WendiDecember 26, 2012 at 10:05

Laughed my head off all the way through Mrs. Smudd – deeelightful!

Joe
PublicDecember 26, 2012 at 09:56

So my missus was ‘economical with the truth’ when she told me FSOG was the
new Dulux colour chart?

DiocleseDecember
26, 2012 at 08:57

It’s when you get one that tells you all about people you don’t even know
that it gets me…

Anna
RaccoonDecember 26, 2012 at
09:42

Or tells you that ‘the darling boy is sadly getting divorced’ – but
doesn’t tell you why….

AmfortasDecember 26, 2012 at 08:18

We are to be considered ‘fortunate’ that this site provides typed missives
and does not cater for pdf.s, otherwise we might have been assailed by an
original in shakey handwriting.

Anna
RaccoonDecember 26, 2012 at
08:24

Your learned Editor kindly retypes it all – and before breakfast too!