The Dunwich Family Christmas Letter

The Dunwich Digest: or What We Did in 2009

by Charlie Dunwich

 

2009 was a great year for the Dunwich family. No-one was arrested, sectioned or served with an ASBO which was quite an achievement for us!

New Year was a sad event, marked as it was by Grandpa's passing. He is still in regular contact with us, however, and seems to be enjoying his "retirement" from the world. We hear that he has enrolled on a degree course with the Open University! Nice to hear they have changed their policies on admitting post-living students.

Mary is keeping herself busy with all her LingQ activities. As well as studying German and Russian, she tells me she has started on Japanese, Celtic and Whale. One of these is probably a joke but I'm not sure which.

She also keeps busy chatting with all her students over the internet. She seems to get a lot of fun out of helping people learn English, and either she is a good tutor or people enjoy her tall stories, because they keep coming back for more.

James turned 12 this year and is now enjoying "Big School". Apart from a detention which he got for walking in circles round a dustbin (this contravenes Health and Safety regulations, we were told), he has been working hard and keeping out of trouble. He has also been keeping busy in his spare time this year, although since he built himself a working space-time machine "time" has become a very flexible concept for us. I don't suppose he tells us about a quarter of the places he visits and the people he meets! We do know that he met Alexander Graham Bell in Boston in 1876, as he recorded the first words uttered into a telephone, and gave them to Mary for a ringtone. He's as thoughtful as ever.

James has also made several trips into the twenty-second century this autumn, and has met his grandson. "Virus" (short for Vincent Rufus 812372-MD-@#Y Dunwich) is a very interesting character and he and James are like twin souls. James has learned a lot about Britain in the twenty-second century, which is sure to come in useful in his school work this year! Virus is helping him with his science project, but James refuses to give us any details because it's a "surprise". If James' former science projects are anything to go by, it won't be home-made bath salts!

Minnie turned eight this year. She has been doing very well at school and received only one suspension and a formal written warning, due to her home-made gunpowder. Fortunately she didn't get the mixture right and it didn't explode so much as hiss and fizzle and make a very nasty smell in the music room. As Minnie is one of the school's keenest guitar students, she was most affected by the fumes and ended up being sick in the school piano. That should teach her to weigh ingredients out more carefully!

I have been very productive this year too. I have continued my work on Badger Protection in the County (I've been shortlisted for the national "Badger Minder" Award, which is quite a feather in my cap!) In my spare time I have been making a Dalek. My friend and colleague Harry the Geek, who has made good progress with his mental health issues since was sectioned early in the year, has been very helpful. Harry is an electronics genius, and I am getting the hang of moulding plaster, fibre glass and (where necessary) cheese, so the work is coming along very well. We hope to have it finished in time for the Dusty Mouldings Summer Festival.

Finally, no Christmas letter would be complete without a word about our pets. Dodgson is very well. He is very fit, thanks to the regular walks the children take him on! I was worried that the sight of a dodo on a lead might cause comment in the neighbourhood, but Mary has managed to convince the neighbours that he in a Madagascan Racing Turkey. Besides, the children mostly exercise him in the grounds of the local psychiatric hospital, where the residents are used to such sights.

For his birthday James was given a hamster. Bytes is a Syrian cream female and very tame. I haven't seen her for a while, I believe she is living free range under James' bed. He assures me he cleans her out regularly every week, straight after cleaning out the dodo pen.

Hoping you and your family are all well, sane and happy,

Wishing you all the very best for 2010,

 

Charlie, Mary, James, Minnie, Dodgson and Bytes (wherever she is).