AWOL Birthday Book

 A desperate search in our house over many weeks has accelerated with increasing yelps of despair. Critical to the smooth running of Carol's birthday/anniversary calendar has been a well-worn, red leather covered note book, containing every day of the year. Painstakingly, Carol has entered birthdays as new members of the family have arrived, as friends have become close, as her big heart has embraced a selection of people through our ministries in UK and USA (and, more importantly their big hearts have embraced us).

Matching this careful record have been her filing cabinets of cards, collected through the ages for every kind of situation.  She has labelled them and either side of this desk as I type I can see the drawers signed: Thinking of You; Humour, Arty/blank; Thank You; Family Birthday, Birthday (2 general drawers) Special occasions; Cambridge/Blank and several more plus selection boxes. Her vast collection encompasses all human conditions and, for birthdays, she has anticipated celebrating specific ages with several 80 and 90 cards (sometimes bought with specific people in mind).  If you are even slightly impressed you should be, for sending cards and marking occasions has been one of Carol's distinctive trademarks through the years.

You can imagine our distress therefore when this repository of unsent cards, especially birthday cards, is sabotaged by the total loss of the master list in the little red book.  Each month Carol would look up the latest batch to receive from her collection.  Now, at a total loss (well not quite total because we do remember family birthdays) we are hearing from people concerned that no birthday card arrived. 'Carol never forgets - what's happened?' they say. I lamely explain the lost address book and the general state of confusion this end.  But it's sad. Really sad.  If you happen to be someone Carol has always remembered let me apologize right now. Sorry!