I was quite excited at finding and reading the Daunt publication of Christmas with dull people. Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped. I did like the last two (of the four stories: Down pens and Bertie's Christmas Eve stories, the one about thank you letters, the other on party revellers locked in the cowshed. I have come to the conclusion that Saki’s style of writing does not quite fit with the world as it is now. That is sad. Getting back to thank you letters, he is spot on about them. They hang over one like a dark cloud throughout the Christmas period. There is always someone in the family, normally the mother, who keeps bringing the matter up. Have you written your thank you letters yet? In between stories I was looking up the waste collection timetable over Christmas. The local council suspends collection of garden waste and other such stuff from Christmas until mid January or thereabouts. As suggested in Saki’s story, why not do something like that with thank you letters? There should be a closed season for them. The psychology of giving presents is embedded in the story too - the giver and receiver pretty well know that this ritual is just for the sake of it. Why do we thank someone for something we don’t want when we know that they know we won’t want it and that’s why they bought it anyway. The trick of the cowshed story is that Bertie gets everyone into the shed on the premise that animals speak like humans once a year at midnight on Christmas night. Perhaps they do but they didn’t on this occasion and the villain of the piece, Bertie, who locked them in had a great party with other people instead.
I take back anything negative about Saki. ( )