Dear friends

A Christmas letter

It’s time for one of those lovely Christmas letters* from the Lears, where we bore you silly with our news and gloat about our successes. So, if you are kind enough to continue to read this we hope it might at least make you smile, and can guarantee it will make the cracker jokes you have tomorrow seem a lot funnier.

Nick has a new hobby: he is writing film scripts. So far he has written three blockbuster epics – a trilogy about an ordinary disgraced policeman who realises that a master criminal has bought the world’s supply of indigestion remedies and will only sell them at triple the price. Meanwhile his henchmen have altered the recipe for pastry in order to make crusts inedible and it’s up to our hero to stop them on his own. The trilogy is called ‘Pie Hard’.

Nick got banned from a local pub this year but had thought it was a compliment. He did a poetry reading and the pub landlord said, “You’re bard!” Next year Nick will be performing magic at an international venue. (He is sure that someone from overseas must have been to Maldon Town Hall and at some point so that makes it international in his mind).

He has just started on the 5.2 diet – where you eat what you want for 5 days and then fast for 2 days. He says that the first 5 days have been brilliant.

Sally asked her gym instructor to teach her how to do the splits this year. When he asked her how flexible she was she told him that she could only do Wednesdays.

She has given up her job at the shoe recycling centre: it was sole destroying. She got the job after visiting a local shoe shop having heard they were selling recycled shoes. She was struggling to get one on and an assistant said, “Try it with the tongue out.” And she replied, “Itth thtill too thmall.”

Thomas has been working on a new computerised payment system based at the Vatican: Papal.

He went to the doctors and asked him if he had anything for wind. The doctor gave him a kite. This year he has broken the world record for giggling at the most flatulence-related jokes and noises.

He was impressed by recent research into feet. Apparently ducks have webbed feet so they can stamp out forest fires. And elephants have flat feet to stamp out burning ducks.

Hannah is still engaged to Olly Murs, but there is no wedding date yet. We’re keeping it quiet so that she is not inundated with attention from Hello and so that she does not receive too many death threats from other fans. She wishes you all an Olly MrsMurs.

Next year she will finish the supercar that she has been hand-building in her bedroom and will be allowing the team from Top Gear to drive it around their track… once she has worked out how to get it out of her bedroom.

She went to the local bakery in order to set up a bank account: it was a currant account.

Her geography teacher asked her if Sally helped her with her geography homework. “No,” said Hannah, “she did it all on her own.”

We wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Be blessed, be a blessing (with tinsel on as it’s Christmas)

*Any resemblance to actual events is completely coincidental and should be ignored. The rest of the family wish to distance themselves from these jokes and would like you to know that it’s all Nick’s idea.