Esther Chilton

It’s Friday and time for my guest writer slot. This week I’m welcoming back Jean Harris. She’s appeared in this slot a few times now, with A Safe Place, Green Fingers and Stitched Up! Here’s another of her ‘A lighter look at life’ pieces:

It’s in the Cards

By

Jean Harris

Birthday cards, anniversary cards, get well soon cards – they all seem to be getting more and more expensive these days. Though who can put a price on seeing a loved one’s face light up when they open a card with a special message? However, after spending the best part of ten pounds on just three cards, I was beginning to wonder.

It was then that I came up with an idea. Well, it wasn’t strictly my idea. It was Aunt Daph’s or to be more precise the manufacturers’ who make all the sequins, stickers, gel pens and glitter that they encourage us to glue onto plain card.

And Aunt Daph had done just that on her birthday card to me. It was a masterpiece. Though I suppose you can’t exactly call a twee teddy bear with foam flowers and crystal butterflies a masterpiece, but it did look very good. And the writing in gold pen was very fancy, too.

It looked so much nicer than a shop-bought card. I knew love and effort had gone into that card and I wanted to do the same (as well as save some money).

I rang Aunt Daph and she gladly told me all the relevant details. She made it sound so easy. A bit of glue here. A bit of glue there.

I was certain I had improved since my macaroni and glue-plastered pictures, which Mum always put on the wall. Though they did seem to disappear a few hours later – probably to line the bottom of the bin.

All the necessary tools weren’t too expensive either and before long, I was sat at the dining table surrounded by piles of paper, wooden frogs, ladybirds and hearts, self-adhesive gems (no glue required so what could go wrong?), shiny sprinkles of every shape and the most enormous pot of glue. Well, it’s not my fault glue pots only seem to come in minuscule or mighty size. 

I thought I would start off with a simple card – a picture full of hearts to celebrate our wedding anniversary. All I had to do was glue the hearts onto the card. Simple, but effective. It would have been if the hearts had stayed stuck to the card. Instead, they fell off one by one onto the newspaper I’d laid carefully underneath. When I tried to prize the hearts off, they were covered in the daily paper’s latest headlines.

Our anniversary would have to be given a miss.

I tried a birthday card next – a floral one that could be used for anyone at anytime. My flowers looked lovely – all colours of every description covered the card. The stems were a bit wobbly, but I could have got away with it if I hadn’t gone that one step too far.

I love glitter, you see, especially gold and silver glitter. It’s so pretty. I dabbed the card with glue and shook the glitter – a little vigorously I have to admit, but it didn’t seem to matter as hardly any glitter came out. I gave it a thump on the end. The top shot off and in the blink of an eye, I had a very glittery carpet.

My self-adhesive stickers didn’t fare any better. They seemed to flick out of my fingers and prefer my jumper to the card.

I thought about Christmas cards. Perhaps if I started now, I would have something resembling a card by Christmas. Alas, I knew my snowman would end up with one eye and Father Christmas would have his hat stuck to his foot.

Perhaps shop-bought cards aren’t so bad after all. I wonder if they do discount for a bulk order…

Jean Harris loves reading and always enjoyed writing at school. Now she’s retired, she’s decided it’s time she started writing again.   

 If you’d like to be included in my guest writer slot, please get in touch: estherchilton@gmail.com. Poems can be up to 60 lines and prose 2000 words. If you’d like to add a short bio and photo, then great.